It will be hard for any water customer, be they a household or a business, not to have noticed the extreme contrast in weather conditions between seasons recently. Last summer’s droughts have been sandwiched between successive very wet winters.
This fluctuation between floods and droughts will be more noticeable to some than to others, with farms at the forefront. No sector is more dependent on the weather and the impact of reduced output is felt by everybody through shortages and higher prices.
For those reasons, a farmer may be among the commercial users who need their business water supplier to develop innovations and means of greater resilience against floods and droughts alike.
This could include measures such as water storage, grey water use or the digging of wells to provide extra water when there are shortages.
Could A Law Change Permit New Reservoirs On Farmland?
However, one measure that cannot be undertaken at present is for farmers to establish their own reservoirs on agricultural land, as it breaches the Reservoirs Act 1975.
Speaking in a House of Lords Debate on the topic of changing weather patterns and floods, Baroness McIntosh of Pickering, the former MP for Thirsk and Malton, raised this very issue with Labour minister Baroness Hayman of Ullock.
She said: “The Minister will be aware that there is an issue with storing water on farmland as it breaches the de minimis rule of the Reservoirs Act 1975. When does she plan to revisit that Act?”
Baroness McIntosh noted how schemes such as the Slowing the Flow project in Pickering and the use of sustainable drains in Hull had served the dual purpose of diverting floodwater and then storing it for reuse during droughts.
Responding to the query, Baroness Hayman noted that the MP for Hull is the water minister and is “very aware of these issues”.
She added: “We are currently looking at our reservoir policy, because we need to consider how best to make use of the water that we have, future water storage needs and so on.”
How Would Allowing Reservoirs On Small Farms Change Policy?
This promise of a review could have some very significant implications, as it would mean the government is not stopping at its current position of seeking to prevent future water shortages by building nine new reservoirs, a key policy pledge made before the last election.
The primary purpose of these major new reservoirs will be to add to existing sources of water for homes and businesses across the country, which is a very different idea from farms having their own small, individual reservoirs for capturing and storing excess winter water.
However, the basic benefits should be obvious:
- It helps to reduce flooding
- It creates an extra source of stored water for supply in drier times
- This helps farmers protect food supplies
Indeed, it is worth noting that before modern legislation like the Reservoirs Act 1975, which is primarily concerned with the upkeep of artificial water bodies, the use of small reservoirs in rural areas for limited use was extensive.
One can see this by visiting places in the Lake District, where many disused small reservoirs still exist, either as enlarged tarns with dams or entirely artificial tarns. For example, there are several of these in the Grizedale Forest, but just one natural tarn.
These were not all for agricultural use, of course. Some (such as Gooseyfoot Tarn, providing for Hawkshead) once served villages or old mine workings, with the latter now mostly closed and the former now getting water from larger public reservoirs.
The Lake District is a prime example of this practice because it is a high rainfall area where lakes form naturally, making an artificial one easy to construct, or providing a pre-existing body of water that could be enlarged.
Can Your Water Supplier Help Establish A New Reservoir?
Nonetheless, wherever rain falls and the ground can get flooded, a new reservoir into which water can be diverted may prove invaluable.
What business water users can do is ask their suppliers what they can do to enable such water storage to take place. If an amendment to the Reservoirs Act 1975 will make it easy to bring back such facilities to farms and other rural businesses, can your supplier help?
This could involve fitting the necessary infrastructure of pipes and valves to ensure that there is more than just a freshly-dug hole in the ground that, on its own, could end up being a big pond full of muddy water in winter that becomes a drying muddy swamp in summer.
Instead, it could form an important piece of water infrastructure that, if multiplied across many farms in high rainfall areas, could be highly beneficial for both flood prevention and supply resilience.
