There are those who predict that the next World War will start with a squabble over water and who it belongs to. In this country, with a population obsessed with the weather, we seem to be regularly afflicted by extremes- at one floods of gargantuan proportions and at the other droughts, which create the need for a Ministerial appointment. Will we ever get it right?
And yes! It is all the fault of the Environment Agency and those beastly farmers who suck the rivers dry to irrigate their crops. However, the Environment Agency has now persuaded the government to change the law and farmers will now be carefully controlled as never before over the way they use water on their farms. So now that is sorted out the only people to blame will be the Environment Agency! Well, it makes a nice story, but what are the facts and what is this new law?
The Water Act 2003 completely updates the previous longstanding abstraction licensing system. Abstraction licences will now be time-limited and those that are unused for four years can be varied or revoked by the Environment Agency without compensation. Importantly, too, from April 2005 it will be licence holders and not the Environment Agency, which will be liable for any loss, or damage to others that can be shown to be caused by that permitted abstraction. In the West Midlands the irrigation of potatoes is high on the agenda and it is no surprise that the British Potato Council is using its website- www.potato.org.uk - to give detailed advice to growers on how to work within the Act.
To successfully renew their abstraction licences growers will need to have a very firm grip on their irrigation programmes. The collection of data including rainfall records, a water audit, water usage maps and a knowledge of nature sites protected by the Habitats
and Birds Directives will be essential, because growers will have to prove that they do actually need the water in the first place. The Council advises, on its website, that at least 4 years of records will be required when applying or reapplying for a licence One new aspect of the Water Act 2003 is that licences will not be tied to particular farms, but can be traded like any other quota. The Act will, of course, create more paper, consume more midnight oil and increase costs for growers, but for all that it will set a benchmark for water conservation in the countryside and show the general public that whatever they use in their gardens and for cleaning their cars, farmers are leading the way in the war on waste.
There are many horticulturists, who are already making a very big contribution to water conservation by using trickle irrigation systems. They, in the past, were not required to apply for licences, but in 2005/6 they too will be brought into the same system. It would be a dreadful blow if any of those, who have probably been irrigating in this way for years are denied a licence. The Environment Agency could have a fight on its hands over this one. Looking at it from the Agency’s point of view it does not know how many of these ‘tricklers’ there are and how much water they use and this is its way of finding out.