What do water smart communities look like? – CIWEM

From soil to spring, to sea, to soil again – our relationship with the water cycle has been fragmented for too long. It’s time to rethink how we manage water. How can sustainable practice, climate resilience and integrated approaches reshape our future water management? Ky Trickett reports

Across England and Wales our water cycle is at risk with too much, too little and poor-quality water. We are experiencing frequent severe flooding, sustained droughts and increased impacts on water quality.

Projected UK housing growth in its current form will increase demand on water services to an unsustainable position and impact the wider environment. The existing water network is old and hard to retrofit. But where new housing developments are planned there’s an opportunity to rethink how water arrives at the taps, to work with the construction industry to do things differently.

One solution is to create water-smart communities whose infrastructure treats water where it falls. This approach reduces pollution and flood risk and improves water quality, as an amenity and in the environment.

In practice this could mean harnessing non-potable water using rainwater-harvesting or sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) that integrate nature into the urban setting: think tree pits, permeable pavements and raingardens.

CIWEM is collaborating in Enabling Water Smart Communities (EWSC), an innovation project to explore the relationship between integrated water management and new housing. EWSC is exploring which infrastructure solutions can work with nature so that people and the environment thrive.

The EWSC project is funded through the Ofwat Water Breakthrough Challenge, led by Anglian Water. The partners include Arup, water companies and leading academics, developers and housing associations.

The project has a three-year timeline and will run until December 2025, split into four phases; discovery, definition, development and delivery. EWSC is now in the discovery phase that will inform how the project can deliver most impact.

But how do we tackle historic water-industry goliaths to deliver the solutions we need? What does a water-smart community even look like, and how do we get there? The Environment asked five members of the EWSC project team to share their vision.