Minerals And The Water Environment

Addressing potential conflicts

By Dr Alan Thompson, head of earth sciences, and Claire Huxley, principal hydrogeologist, Capita Symonds Ltd

During the last two decades the sustainable management of water resources, the water environment and its associated ecosystems have steadily gained in importance, both in terms of public awareness and in policy recognition at local, regional, national and European levels. European legislation in this area (particularly the Water Framework Directive and the Habitats Directive) has placed increased emphasis on the need for holistic catchment management and for a stronger requirement for scientific proof in decisions relating to the control of potential impacts. In England and Wales, this change has been seen in the emergence of Catchment Abstraction Management Strategies (CAMS) and in forthcoming, wider-ranging River Basin Management Plans (due to be drafted for consultation in 2008).

More specifically, in relation to the minerals industry, the Water Act 2003 has brought in a requirement for existing exemptions to be lifted on the need for abstraction licences for quarry dewatering. Once this happens, following publication of the corresponding regulations (see below), the potential impacts of dewatering will be controlled by Environment Agency licences as well as by the planning system. As well as requiring planning permission (and associated Environmental Statements, where applicable), all new and existing quarry dewatering schemes involving abstractions of more than 20m³ per day will require one of the following types of abstraction licence:

• Full licence (with volumetric charges): water abstracted from one source of supply for a period greater than 28 days to be used for some purpose, or discharged in such a way that it is not returned to a source of supply.
• Transfer licence (administration fee only): water abstracted from one source of supply for a period greater than 28 days and transferred (without intervening use) to another source of supply, or a different point in the same source of supply.
• Temporary licence: allows abstraction from a source of supply for a period less than 28 days.

Decisions on licence applications will be based on assessments of the potential net impact of the abstraction on the water environment, through the consideration of:

• water resource availability
• the quantities of water abstracted from and returned to a source of supply (which would be expected to cancel out in the case of transfer licences)
• the potential environmental impact of any drawdown associated with the abstraction, taking account of the sensitivity and needs of the features that may be affected
• the likely effectiveness of any mitigation measures put forward (or already in use) to address such impacts.

In order to satisfy these requirements, it may be expected that licence applicants will need to demonstrate a sound conceptual understanding of the hydrogeological system, including water balance calculations, backed up by adequate monitoring data (both spatially and over time) and, in some cases, by numerical groundwater modelling.

The new licensing regime will come into force following publication of the corresponding secondary legislation (the Water Resources (Abstraction & Impounding) Regulations, and the Transitional Regulations). Consultation on the second of these is not expected to take place until April 2007 at the earliest, with final publication of the regulations sometime thereafter. The transitional regulations will apply to sites that are already dewatering at the time the exemptions are lifted. Most of these sites will already have a corresponding system of regulation in place through the planning system, and are likely to have two years from that date to submit their licence applications. The Environment Agency is then likely to have a further five years to consider its decisions on these ‘transitional’ sites, during which time dewatering may continue.

All licences will be time limited. This is because the Environment Agency needs the flexibility to be able to deal with future changes in the availability of, and demand for, essential water resources. This could not be achieved if all licences were of unlimited duration. Equally, however, individual abstractors need a reasonable degree of confidence in being able to continue their abstractions, and the time limiting of licences seeks to achieve a sensible balance between these two positions. Licences will normally be of 12 years duration, linked into the six-year CAMS cycle by means of common end dates, although there will be exceptional cases where the duration may be either longer or shorter than this.

The introduction of the new licensing regime for quarry dewatering is set against the backdrop of a substantially new planning system, brought about by the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. Two of the most relevant changes here are the explicit requirements for planning policies and decisions to be founded on ‘robust and credible evidence’ and the introduction of Regional Spatial Strategies as part of the statutory Development Plan.

Together these changes in both planning procedures and licensing requirements, including the emergence of the Environment Agency’s catchment-style River Basin Management Plans, dictate a need for the relationships between quarrying, water consumption and environmental protection to be examined far more closely at a strategic level. Logically, if this can be achieved, the planning and regulatory strategies that emerge from that process should then have a strong influence on individual planning and licensing decisions.

To provide some guidance on these issues, Capita Symonds have carried out a number of closely related ALSF-funded research projects. The output from these projects, due for publication in March 2007, will include a protocol for managing the interface between the planning and licensing regimes with respect to quarry dewatering (a joint ALSF/ Environment Agency project aiming to develop a procedural framework that facilitates a smooth introduction of the new licensing regime); a draft Annex to Mineral Planning Statement 2 on ‘Minerals and the Water Environment’ (a guide to good practice that updates the 1998 DETR guide to provide both Internet-based guidance and DCLG with material for a forthcoming Water Annex to MPS2); and an updated guide to good practice on mitigating the effects of surface mineral workings on the water environment (practical, scientific good-practice guidance on the design and efficacy of a variety of dewatering mitigation measures). The latter covers not only the recent changes in planning and legislation, but also new independent empirical evidence regarding the effectiveness of various dewatering mitigation measures.

For further information contact Claire Huxley at Capita Symonds: [email protected]