Fiftieth anniversary convention marking the 1976 drought

Good morning, everybody. There’s one thing becoming about discussing long-term resilience right here at The Institution of Civil Engineers. In reality, throughout the 1976 drought, which we’re going to speak about in the present day, the president of the ICE was Sir Norman Rowntree, who himself was a number one hydrologist.

Our topic in the present day is the good drought itself and what we’ve realized from it. I’m going to spend a little bit of time now speaking concerning the occasions of 1976 – I’m going to speak about how since that point our preparedness has modified, however the threat of drought has modified. I’m going to make a case for what we within the Environment Agency suppose must be achieved throughout each infrastructure, social change, coverage, and science to make sure that we’ve acquired entry to wash and plentiful water within the years and a long time forward.

Now, it’s a really unusual factor about our collective reminiscence of our historical past that some years are extra resonant than others. Some stand out within the reminiscence, and others much less so. And 1976 may be very a lot a kind of years that individuals recall the occasions of that 12 months. They form perceptions, they form narratives, even in the present day, and even for folks like me who weren’t alive on the time, studying about it, many elements of life within the UK in 1976 really feel very acquainted, however different elements really feel terribly distant and alien, an actual reminder that the previous really generally is a international nation.

1976 was in some ways a really tough 12 months for Britain. It was a time of very excessive inflation. There was important industrial strife. It was in a single sense the height of the dreadful tragedies of the troubles, and naturally there was persistent excessive climate all year long.  But it was additionally a 12 months the place the recorded life satisfaction reached a post-war excessive, and there was important social progress on points like equality of pay between women and men, and civil rights.

There’s a way from folks’s recollections of the 12 months, significantly those who had been youngsters on the time, that the summer season of 1976 was kind of halcyon interval – limitless summer season days, a Wimbledon match with none rain, an period of house hoppers, cricket excursions, the entire world slowed down within the warmth over that interval.

But for these working in water the 12 months had fairly a unique flavour, and we will see within the knowledge simply how drastic that 12 months was. Starting with a really dry summer season in 1975 adopted by a really dry winter, 1976 noticed document after document being damaged in our local weather. It was the driest 12 months because the Second World War and had the longest heatwave, with 13 days of temperatures above 30 levels centigrade recorded in West London, beginning on the twenty second of June – so we’re virtually 50 years previous that in the present day. Water shops, each in reservoirs and rivers, reached document low ranges proper the way in which throughout the nation. In London, commentators famous that the grass wasn’t simply brown, because it typically is in the summertime, it had gone white from the warmth that had burnt the vegetation throughout the nation. Farmers took images of their fields as cracked rock-hard pans of earth, and kids taking part in within the streets discovered new methods of amusing themselves, rolling up melted tarmac utilizing lolly sticks as if it was melted cheese.

As a consequence of all of that, many individuals skilled disruptions of their water provide, and a few cities by late summer season solely had entry to water from standpipes. The southwest was significantly onerous hit by this. There was typically very heavy-handed enforcement of water restrictions, and other people complained it was turning neighbour upon neighbour. In Whitehall, nervous concerning the potential penalties of the drought, a primary Minister for Drought was appointed. There had been numerous public campaigns to encourage folks to scale back consumption, and plenty of of them, even on this pre-internet period, provoke the form of predictable ridicule you’ll anticipate, concepts about placing bricks in your bathroom system, or the well-known injunction to think about bathing with a good friend. If you watch interviews on the time, it’s actually placing how many individuals in contrast the texture of the nation on the time to the struggle – a struggle they’d lived via. And they identified the necessity for society to come back collectively to take care of this disaster, and the significance of performing with equity and justice.

This drought wasn’t only a one-off occasion. It had very long-term penalties. It wasn’t simply the £500 million that farmers misplaced as their crops died within the fields. It wasn’t simply the 25% improve in wheat costs, or the astonishing plague of ladybirds that hit southern England. Long-term research of the pure atmosphere in England, printed many a long time later, confirmed that the drought really modified the distribution of flora in southern England, with significantly extreme impacts on heat-sensitive species like beech. And maybe for the primary time because the struggle, folks woke as much as the significance of water – its vulnerability, its significance, its shortage, and that registered with the general public.

So, I’d like to speak now about how we modified water coverage since 1976 and the place that’s left us over the past 5 a long time. Now going again to 1976 – the way in which by which water was managed may be very completely different to the way it’s managed in the present day. There was, actually, a 1973 Water Act, and it took actually essential steps to create a regionalised system with built-in water administration on the regional degree. In reality, there have been 10 new regional water authorities created, sweeping away the 27 earlier water authorities who had been in existence since 1963. That is related as a result of when the disaster hit, the water sector as a complete was already present process an enormous quantity of change. Despite that shift to regional planning, by 1976 it was nonetheless very early days. The new water authorities had a really fragmented system, quite a lot of very small-scale planning, quite a lot of smaller cities and market cities related to very single sources of water, and the drought actually shone a light-weight on how large an issue that was.

In July 1976 the federal government made an announcement to say that Leeds was going to face actually extreme issues that autumn, whereas Bradford, only a few miles away, could be unaffected, depicting the truth that techniques had been very fragmented and damaged up between completely different catchments.

But I believe the federal government did change its strategy to drought in 1976. I believe we will level out three actually large long-term shifts that the drought led to.

The first one was that drought appeared in Whitehall rightly as a doubtlessly disastrous catastrophic threat for the nation, and an enormous quantity of effort, each then and ever since, has been put into structured, systematic planning to handle the impression of a future drought. Our doctrine is to not reply within the second on the hoof, however to plan upfront and suppose via how we might reply, and we’ve acquired far more intensive proof now, and planning about the place we get water within the occasion of a drought, and the way we prioritise its use. The legislation progressively caught up, and by the early 2000s drought plans and long-term water useful resource administration plans grew to become statutory necessities for all water firms. And then in 2010, following the Pitt Review for flooding, we had the Flood and Water Management Act, which created the EA as a class one civil contingency responder.

Nowadays, we handle drought as a nationwide strategy. We have a transparent doctrine about who does what, how we put together, and the way we reply and get well. Core to that’s the National Drought Group, which is a cross-sector senior degree group that the Environment Agency chairs. It brings collectively all elements of drought response in England – not simply authorities, however regulators, our colleagues within the Met Office, water firms, and representatives from agriculture, the atmosphere, and key sectors. It has helped us get to know one another and perceive when a drought does hit, we’re able to act.

We have additionally acquired a lot stronger expectations of the water business than we had on the time. Water firms should produce 25-year long-term water useful resource administration plans, and these have pushed far more built-in water networks and important (however not full) reductions in leakage. Through these plans, firms should do sturdy planning for anticipated development in demand, future environmental wants, and the impacts of local weather change, and we anticipate them to be resilient to a one in 500 drought occasion, like 1976.

Now, planning is essential, however in of itself it doesn’t create any extra water. And there was important progress within the 70s and 80s in increasing techniques to retailer, handle, and switch water.

Numerous new reservoirs opened, notably Kielder in 1981, Rutland, and the Queen Mother Reservoir in West London (each of which had been really commissioned in 1976) but in addition quite a lot of very a lot smaller amenities, significantly strengthening resilience in locations just like the south west with the Roadford and Colliford schemes in Devon and Cornwall. This was complemented by a major growth of real-time monitoring of groundwater and river ranges. Today, the EA collects extra knowledge than ever, extra effectively with new know-how and improved processes on the state of our waters and groundwater, and there was actual progress on leakage. It was over 30% 30 years in the past; it’s now beneath 20% – however there’s nonetheless extra room to do. All these enhancements have meant that regardless of having extreme drought episodes since 1976, we’ve not needed to resort utilizing standpipes in England, though now we have needed to plan for doing so when issues acquired very demanding.

That is an efficient monitor document, however sadly we will’t be complacent concerning the future, as a result of the reality is that since 1976 we’ve begun to see the impression of human-induced local weather change. For a long time among the options of 1976 – the very excessive temperatures, the lengthy heatwaves – had been thought of wholly distinctive, however in some ways, wanting on the climate we’ve had in recent times, they’ve turn out to be somewhat regular.

To give some examples, we’ve now burst via the 40-degree warmth barrier with temperatures far exceeding these skilled in 1976. The summers of 2018, 2022 and 2025 had been among the hottest on document, and so they put nice stress on water provides. And it isn’t simply the severity of the warmth and the drought that goes with it.

When rain lastly does come, typically in winter, it’s falling far more closely over a lot shorter time durations, inflicting widespread floor flooding, which our techniques are struggling to deal with. And we have to put together for and talk this new situation we’re residing in – this world in which there’s both far an excessive amount of rain or far too little and that oscillates very ceaselessly. And one of many issues that makes this even more durable to elucidate to the general public is that the modifications now we have seen thus far are usually not local weather change, however somewhat the primary levels of local weather change.

We will now have to make our nation resilient in a really completely different set of circumstances to the Seventies, a shifting local weather that’s of immense pace.  

And we’re not the identical nation as we had been in 1976 in all kinds of the way. For a begin, England’s inhabitants is 11 million greater than it was again then, and the projections present it would develop by additional 8 million folks by the mid 2050s. Now, assembly the wants of that rising inhabitants, while respecting the atmosphere is a problem I believe that we will meet, however provided that we take sturdy and complete motion. At the identical time, since 1976 we’ve been helped by a decline in water use from water-intensive industries, however after all water use can go up or down, examples like farming and horticulture – practices change or new industrial calls for come up.

Now, a part of our response must be to take a look at demand and scale back it in very cautious methods. It is an fascinating statement to make that the recorded knowledge on per capita consumption for water within the Sixties and 70s was really decrease than it’s now, beneath 100 litres per particular person per day, in comparison with about 140 litres per particular person in the present day. Lifestyles had been completely different, whether or not it was entry to non-public automobiles, watering of gardens, using home home equipment, and even high-flow showers, folks had completely different expectations.

So, we’ve acquired to deal with these complicated challenges, accepting the society and tradition we reside in now, not the one we had again in 1976 and regardless of many efforts and widespread introduction of metering, we’ve but to see important reductions in per capita consumption.

Another side of public opinion is that in comparison with 1976, folks’s aspirations for his or her water atmosphere are far more rigorous. We have seen the wave of disgust brought on by sewage spills, lots of that are unlawful, and we additionally see real concern across the nation from communities concerning the well being of their rivers. People don’t wish to see the rivers abstracted until they run dry, or thick with air pollution. And the amount of water in these rivers issues simply as a lot as the extent of pollution. Policy makers have to consider these shifts in perspective after they contemplate their responses.

Taken altogether, this rising inhabitants and demand, these greater temperatures and the necessity to minimize unsustainable extraction to assist the pure atmosphere, might depart us 5 billion litres of water a day quick by 2050 – a couple of third of our present on-grid provide.

Hopefully you are feeling I’ve set out the dimensions of the problem we face, however now I’d like to speak about what we have to do to satisfy it.

Firstly, we’ve acquired to construct extra infrastructure and construct it quicker and higher. Now, the Environment Agency is celebrating its thirtieth birthday this 12 months, however it’s a matter of deep remorse that in its 30 years of life, not a single new reservoir for public water provide has been accomplished. Now we do now have many schemes across the nation in growth and development. Not solely reservoirs, however water switch schemes, desalination initiatives, and water recycling schemes, all of which must be critically thought of and brought ahead. As regulators, we and our colleagues at Ofwat and the Drinking Water Inspectorate have a joint crew referred to as Rapid, and they’re working very onerous to expedite supply. And as I say, the business should stay centered on its administration of underground belongings and chopping leakage.

Secondly, it’s time to take managing consumption extra critically, and the federal government has set out a objective to get per capita consumption all the way down to 110 litres per particular person per day by 2050.  Later this month, there’ll be a serious water effectivity marketing campaign launched by our colleagues in Ofwat, and we all know from analysis by Waterwise that most individuals do assist effort to scale back water consumption to assist our provides and the atmosphere. We have to make a really particular case of water that, in contrast to among the different world challenges we face, for a lot of communities decreasing your per capita consumption does make a distinction to the quantity of water in your local people, and that there are steps we will take corresponding to becoming a water butt for these fortunate sufficient to have a backyard and introducing extra water-efficient home equipment into your own home. We on the Environment Agency are wanting ahead to motion later from this 12 months from the federal government that may enhance the labelling of home equipment for water effectivity.

Thirdly, we’ve acquired to begin treating water as an built-in holistic system. A local weather with very heavy winter rain adopted by summer season drought wants a unique strategy. The EA desires to make it simpler for farmers to construct on-farm reservoirs, with less complicated allowing that can enable farmers to take extra water in durations of excessive circulate. We wish to assist rural communities develop what we name native useful resource choices, that are networks permitting water customers to collaborate regionally. We wish to create landscapes with our companions that may extra simply soak up water and assist groundwater recharge, for instance by altering how we handle upland soils to soak up extra water. We wish to see city areas and concrete planning change to create areas that may attenuate and soak up the storm water quickly during times of sharp flooding. We’ve seen that efficiently deployed in cities like Rotterdam, and it’s central to the built-in water administration plan in Manchester. Such measures would minimise the chance from summer season storms and supply extra dependable provides of water to intensive city water customers. Water high quality, flood threat, and drought are completely different elements of comparable issues. As I’m speaking to you in the present day, we’re awaiting the federal government’s detailed response on water regulatory reform. We within the Environment Agency are arguing for stronger built-in catchment planning. We suppose that wanting throughout this water system, working with our companions, utilizing our proof and our information of native environmental techniques, might deliver to bear a way more environment friendly and sturdy water planning system for the longer term.

Finally, I wish to say a phrase about nature. There is rising proof that restoring rivers nearer to their pure habitats, and bettering riverine planting, can’t solely gradual flood, and scale back some eutrophic pollution, however may assist the biota survive excessive temperatures, with extra and deep pooling at river margins. The latest modifications made to combine pure processes into flood administration, and contemplate pure approaches to water high quality, will in our view have a further profit to pure resilience.

Now, all of this work, these shifts we have to see, wants ongoing scientific enter. We want to enhance our modelling and hydrology because the local weather warms. We want to know higher how groundwater strikes via the system and the way it’s recharged higher. We suppose onerous about behavioural science and the way we launch efficient drought responses. We’re taking part in our half on the EA by working with companions just like the Alan Turing Institute to take a look at how AI and machine studying can enhance water system modelling and choice making beneath uncertainty and having discussions with UK Water Industry Research about the right way to be part of up our efforts and maximise our impression.

September and October of 1976 had been the wettest recorded since information started in 1727, and the good drought was dropped at an finish. And we have to transfer on to. So let’s depart the Chopper bikes, Steely Dan, Dennis Healey and all of the occasions of that extraordinary summer season, and look ahead.

I believe that could be a optimistic place to begin our deliberations, as a result of now we have an unlimited alternative on this room working collectively throughout completely different disciplines to be taught from the previous, however take into consideration a greater future. We can take into consideration a future the place financial development and sustainability may be obtained via sturdy motion, and we all know rather a lot already about what must be achieved. So, our collective problem in the present day is to make sure we transfer quick sufficient with sufficient ambition and sufficient collaboration to ensure now we have the impression we wish to see on the water atmosphere of the longer term. Thanks very a lot for coming.