Water supply
Every day, on average, Wessex Water supplies up to 353 million litres of high quality drinking water to its 1.25 million water customers. We operate 100 water sources, 110 treatment plants, 11,400 kilometres of water mains and 344 storage reservoirs for treated water.
Nearly 80% of our water comes from groundwater sources - mostly boreholes. Around 20% comes from rivers and our 12 surface water reservoirs. Wessex Water has not imposed any restrictions on water use since 1976, despite having to meet the needs of up to 300,000 additional holiday visitors a day during the summer months.
Wessex Water’s services are vital to public health, so quality is important. We operate to strict quality assurance standards and our operations have been awarded the internationally recognised quality assurance standard ISO 9001:2000.
At our water treatment works we are installing treatment processes to deal with even the most difficult problems, such as the waterborne organism cryptosporidium. All our water treatment works are also fitted with automatic shutdown facilities as a further safeguard.
We test more than 150,000 drinking water samples a year. For the past five years we have achieved on average 99.9% compliance with strict UK and EU standards.
To improve the quality of water further, Wessex Water is modernising 643 kilometres of mains at a cost of £38 million.
Although water is one of the world's natural resources and falls freely to the ground, the job of making it clean and safe to drink involves sophisticated technology.
Water is a precious resource which many of us take for granted. Each year the demand for water rises as our standard of living improves.
We now use 70% more than we did 30 years ago.
Wessex Water is committed to meeting future demands for water without restrictions or adversely affecting the environment.
We aim to achieve this by:
- reducing leakage
- managing the demand for water
- promoting water conservation.