The water industry:
- supplies around 15 billion litres of water per day to the population of England and Wales
- collects and disposes of over 10 million tonnes of waste water every day.
To do this the industry has:
- over 350,000km of sewers
- 6,000 discharges from sewage treatment works, and
- 25,000 intermittent discharges.
As a result, the water industry has the potential to have a great impact on the environment.
Managing the impact on the environment
Managing this impact is:
- The Environment Agency
- 10 water and sewerage companies, and
- 13 water supply companies.
The Environment Agency is the environmental regulator for the water industry. We analyse, inform and advise on its environmental performance in delivering existing environmental requirements.
We are establishing new environmental requirements through the water companies' Asset Management Plans (AMP), which is one part of the periodic review process.
