Yorkshire Water is about to embark on a groundbreaking £9 million project to improve the quality of its water supplies - by going back to nature and restoring some of the region’s most iconic peatland.

The five year project will see gully blocking and peat restoration work undertaken at a number of renowned peatland sites which are in poor condition following two centuries of industrial pollution and inappropriate land management. The company believes that addressing the poor health of a number of peatland sites located within its water catchment areas will help to arrest the decline it has seen in the purity and quality of water reaching some of its most significant reservoirs.

The decline in water purity is thought to be as a direct result of the increasing degradation of surrounding peatland areas, which has led to rainwater picking up more break-away debris on its reservoir-bound journey.

As a result, Yorkshire Water has increasingly found itself spending more and more money and time treating the highly coloured water entering a number of its major works -with no prospect of the problem abating in the near future. The company has decided that prevention is the way forward as opposed to seeking a costly cure by building more treatment stages at its works, and is planning to tackle the source of the problem by managing local peatland.

 Andrew Walker, Yorkshire Water's catchment development leader, commented:

"We own thousands of hectares of land, much of which we use to collect water for our reservoirs.

 "Unfortunately, due to peatland degradation, colour levels at all of our peatland reservoirs have significantly increased to such an extent over the last 20 years that it was starting to become a major problem in terms of treating the water at some of our works.

 "Rather than investing in expensive technology, we've decided to take a sustainable approach to the problem with an ambitious programme of work which we hope will herald major benefits in terms of stabilising colour levels.

 "But there's more to it than just that. We recognise that we have the opportunity to make a huge difference to some of Yorkshire's most iconic landscapes by restoring them back to health, boosting local biodiversity and benefitting the thousands of visitors and user groups who currently derive enjoyment or income from them.

 "Our work will also have wider environmental benefits too, as we'll be protecting and enhancing peatland which serve as some of the largest natural carbon reservoirs in the UK."

Now considered rarer than rainforest, concern is growing around the condition of heather peatland in the UK, with climate change experts forecasting it to become increasingly warm and dry in the UK over the next fifty years - the worst possible conditions for peatland to thrive.

 Dried up areas of peatland across the UK are now reckoned to release the equivalent of 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year - that's roughly the same as the emissions from a million households.

Yorkshire Water's restoration work will help to restore the water level of a number of peatlands. Keeping the moors wetter for longer should also reduce colour loss and keep the peat where it belongs on the moors - not in local rivers and reservoirs.

The company has employed the services of two of the leading specialists in moorland restoration, Penny Anderson Associates and Dinsdale Moorland Services to carry out the work, with the first five week project beginning this week on the moors above Keighley and the famous Pennine Way.

 The work follows two years of research carried out by Leeds University to map the moor and monitor water quality in the area to identify which areas of the moor generate the most colour and thus are most in need of restoration.

 The Water treatment works which will benefit from Yorkshire Water's restoration work over the next two years are; Oldfield in Keighley, Chellow Heights in Bradford, Longwood in Huddersfield, Langsett in Barnsley and Loxley in Sheffield.