How water usage impacts nature

What’s the connection between the water you use at home and the water that’s in your local environment?

Water is shared by all living things.  The water that comes out of your taps at home has been treated and cleaned, but before that it could have been dripping off a tree, swum in by a trout or shaken off a swan’s feathers.

Using water wisely helps to keep more in the natural environment where it supports all the wonderful animals and plants that rely on it. In a prolonged hot spell, our water usage can make all the difference to this native wildlife.

What happens when there’s a long dry spell? 
Drought conditions can have lasting effects on the natural environment. In the heat, soils dry out and the ground hardens. This makes it harder for nature, crops and farm animals to get the water they need. As water tables in soils drop, so do river levels. This leads to slower, hotter rivers which become dangerous to the life within them.

This can impact an entire food web, making it harder for animals to survive and interrupting breeding cycles. Farmers might need to irrigate crops and provide more fresh water supplies to livestock.

Heat can cause wildfires that destroy natural habitats and leave behind charred remains which wash into streams and rivers when rain eventually returns, impacting even more ecosystems.

Dry soils erode more as they become dusty and crumble away. When it does rain, these degraded soil surfaces become compacted and hydrophobic (they resist water) and can lead to increased run-off and flooding.

The relationship between our water use and the natural environment
Water in a natural environment contains lots of different compounds and substances. These include soil, compounds from road and city run-off, nutrients and chemicals from farms, factories and domestic pets as well as treated water from sewage works. When there is plenty of water, these substances are diluted, a bit like how adding water to squash makes a weaker drink.

When it’s hot and dry, less water flows into rivers, which concentrates the substances (like a stronger drink of squash). This can lead to higher nutrient concentrations, water temperature, light levels and growth of algal blooms that all impact natural habitats and make it harder for species that rely on the water to survive.

We store water in purpose-built reservoirs, then treat to make it safe to drink before supplying it to customers. After use, the wastewater from our toilets, showers, washing machines goes to treatment works where it is cleaned up and returned to rivers and the sea following treatment.

Even though as a water company we take measures to reduce the impact of the water system on the natural environment, the volume of water we use adds to pressure on water resource. That’s why it’s important to be mindful about how much water we use and develop water-saving habits. If we use lots of water in a dry spell, the impact on the natural environment is greater.

How you can help 
We need to be careful with water all year round, not only during dry spells. Adopting water-saving habits throughout the seasons, keeps more water in our reservoirs so it’s there to use in the future, and there’s less impact on the natural world. It also helps to save energy, because of the electricity used in water treatment.

See our water-saving tips for ideas on how you can reduce your water usage.