The Welsh Government has published its Water Strategy for Wales setting out its strategic direction for water policy over the next 20 years and beyond.

The Strategy sets out long-term policy direction in relation to water, with the aim of ensuring a more integrated and sustainable approach to managing water and associated services in Wales.

The 76 page document covers a broad range of matters relating to the management of water systems, including all inland waters, estuaries and coastal waters. The Government said that in particular, it would place a focus on how to increase the resilience of the whole water system in order to maximise the benefits it can bring and reduce costs to consumers and businesses including water companies.

The Strategy consists of the following 6 key themes:

1. Water for nature, people and business
2. Improving the way we plan and manage our water services
3. Delivering excellent services to customers
4. Protecting and improving drinking water quality
5. 21st century sewerage and drainage systems
6. Supporting delivery

The Welsh Government said that in order to deliver the actions in the Strategy it will work in collaboration with delivery partners including regulators, water companies, local authorities and highway authorities

The Strategy flags up a number of key issues for the water companies operating in Wales, including:

• more stringent environmental standards driven by scientific evidence and treatment requirements to deal with emerging contaminants which may require greater investment in water company assets to ensure continued compliance with relevant legislation
• a commitment to reforming the abstraction licensing system in Wales.

It also highlights a proposal to implement a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) in Wales as a significant component of its green growth agenda, describing water quality based markets as viewed as the most easily valued ecosystem markets and likely to be the first type of PES scheme to be developed in Wales. The Strategy says the Welsh Government will support the development of these types of schemes and review legislation if this is required to enable the long term establishment of this type of scheme.

The Strategy cites the following as an example - PES involve a willing ‘buyer’ (e.g. a water company), or beneficiary, of an ecosystem service (e.g. water quality) to voluntarily pay a ‘seller’ (typically a land manager) who is willing to adopt measures to ensure the provision of the particular ecosystem service.

Planning for waste water and seweragew management to be introduced

The Strategy also sets out the Welsh Government’s intention to introduce planning for waste water and sewerage management. There is currently no requirement for sewerage undertakers to develop and maintain a strategic waste water and sewerage management plan - at current levels of investment, public sewers in Wales may not be replaced for up to
700 years, the Strategy says. Aging sewerage and drainage infrastructure needs to be surveyed, maintained and upgraded in order to continue to operate effectively and the impact on customer bills now and in the future taken into account.

The Welsh Assembly is proposing to work with water companies, regulators and local authorities on the issues, describing long term collaborative planning for wastewater and sewerage management as critical to address urban flood risk and deliver Water Framework Directive and Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive outcomes.

The Strategy says the water company planning and regulatory framework for water and sewerage should include:

• Embedding and aligning water company planning with National natural resource policy and relevant area-based natural resource planning processes to ensure planning for water services both informs and takes account of priorities for natural resources management.
• Collaborative catchment management plans and investment.
• Resilience measures, such as climate change projections, population growth and new development.
• A presumption in favour of sustainable solutions, and evidence of their use in preference to expanding or renewing existing infrastructure capacity.
• A strategy for engaging with stakeholders.
• Evidence that sustainable waste water and treatment solutions have been considered, strong justification where they are not used.
• Robust, up to date and credible evidence to demonstrate compliance with mandatory domestic and European obligations.

Other issues addressed in the Strategy, which is supported by a separate Strategic Environmental Assessment and a Habitats Regulations Assessment include leakage, drinking water quality, sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) and the use of Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD).

Click here to download The Water Strategy for Wales