Drought and the heterogeneities of local water resource management

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Drought and the heterogeneities of local water
resource management

• Heather Chappells Will Medd
• Lancaster University

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Drought and Demand project

• Sociological analysis of the 2006 drought in the
  south east of England
• Co-funded by ESRC, UKWIR, Environment Agency,
  Ofwat, Defra, Anglian Water, South East Water,
  Essex and Suffolk Water, Veolia (Three Valleys,
  Folkestone Dover)

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Defining drought
Droughts as natural events caused by absence
of significant rainfall, groundwater levels,
spring discharges and river flows (Environment
Agency, 2002) Droughts as spatially and
temporally differentiated Some droughts are
short and intense for example, a hot, dry
summer while others are long and take some time
to develop. Some droughts affect a large area
while others are concentrated in a few place.
Every drought is different and each has a
different effect on people and the environment
(Environment Agency) Droughts as socially
constructed and politically mediated crises
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Historical constructions of drought

• 1976 drought
• National crisis
• Engineering response
• Cooperative citizens, civic duty to conserve
  water
• 1995 drought
• Privatised water companies, political crisis
• Market-environmentalism
• Politicised uncooperative consumers
• 2006 drought
• Environmental regulation, increased headroom
• Precautionary response, statutory drought plans
• Consumers as co-managers

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National variations in resource pressures
Surface Water
Ground Water
  Source Environment Agency
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Regional variations in drought responses
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Water managers perspectives on hosepipe bans
Well the Environment Agency sees hosepipe bans
as a precautionary measurethe trouble is, once
you put a hosepipe restriction on, its very
difficult to take off again. If you put it on as
a precautionary basis, it always becomes oh well
its rained a bit but it might be dry again next
month, perhaps we better keep it on. So fairly
soon you are in a state of permanent hosepipe
ban. The only time you take them off is when its
so wet that everything is flooding. And thats
going to give us problems in terms of our
customers If youve got full reservoirs its so
difficult to say to your consumers you know, you
cant use the water and also if we went down hard
on customers this year then wed lose their
confidence so they wouldnt react when we needed
them to
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Hosepipe bans mismatching priorities of
regulators and managers

• Environmental regulators
• Drought as a regional problem
• Supported consistent communication campaign and
  blanket ban
• Unified response from all companies to share the
  pain and work for the greater good
• Water managers
• Drought as a problem of localised water
  availability
• Need for softer communication message
• Inflexible response leading to normalisation of
  drought and diminishing impact

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Supply area specificities shaping drought
Essex and Suffolk Water supply areas Two
geographically separate zones Suffolk
Essex Different demand and supply properties
PCC, volatility of demand, levels of network
integration
Source Essex and Suffolk Water
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Infrastructural configurations structuring
drought options
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Household drought management strategies

• Ive got two water butts and Im in the process
  of buying another and shower water will go into
  that (SE Water Consumer)
• Responses of companies
• Its just an added cost I think. I mean
  rainwater harvesting wouldnt have been used this
  drought because people havent had the rain so
  theyd be falling back on the mains system, so
  youd have to spend the money on the mains system
  plus the rainwater system so it wouldnt be
  economic as a drought measureif you go to a
  bigger scale then youre actually doing what we
  as a water company do anyway referring to
  effluent recycling

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Droughts as revelatory events

• Experiences of drought are highly variable,
  dependant on localised resource pressure points,
  the type and timing of demand, and levels of
  network integration.
• Significant disparities in how managers and
  regulators view the scale of the water crisis and
  construct an appropriate level of response
• Embedded infrastructural arrangements can define
  access to resources and shape responses to
  drought.
• Construction of more resilient water systems
  can mean different things to households and
  managers.

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Further questions drought, inequality and
resilience

• How far does making systems more environmentally
  equitable mean ironing out the heterogeneities of
  water resource management or working with local
  specificities?
• How might historically defined access rights
  between neighbouring companies be renegotiated to
  create more inter-regionally resilient systems?
• What does building socio-technical resilience
  mean at multiple scales including engaging
  consumers as co-participants?