2021 Water Resource
and Drought Management
Plan
Supplying the water for our Island to thrive today and every day
Our purpose in Jersey Water is to continue to provide a high-quality resilient water supply for homes and businesses both now and in the future. In normal weather conditions there is enough water available for everyone, but in very dry years, our water resources can become stretched. We all need to play a part to ensure reliable water supplies across Jersey are available when we need them.
Water Resource and Drought Management Plan
Future pressures on reliable water supplies in drought
Our long-term Water Resources and Drought Management Plan identifies two areas for concern that puts pressure on maintaining reliable water supplies in drought conditions in the future:
- climate change – which reduces how much water is reliably available in droughts
- population increase – which predicts that there will be increasing demand for water
We have forecast that these pressures could lead to a shortage of around 8 million litres of water per day by 2045 in a severe drought – that’s equivalent to around 3 Olympic-sized swimming pools or approximately 30% of the daily demand for water.
Through the development of our Water Resources and Drought Management Plan we have considered various options to make up this shortfall to ensure a reliable water supply is available for our customers and island community.
The work we have carried out has concluded that the best way to do this is through a combination of measures to reduce overall demand for water and to ensure sufficient drinking water is available in a drought situation.
Reducing overall water demand
Further action to reduce the volume of water lost by leakage from pipes
Continue to work with our customers to help them save water in homes, schools and businesses
Increasing water supply availability in drought
Expansion of our existing La Rosière desalination plant to reduce the short and medium term supply risk
Work with government to deal with pollution risks to our St Ouen’s boreholes so we can use more underground water supplies
Increase our existing reservoir storage by constructing a larger dam or create a new reservoir site for Jersey
Continue to work with farmers and landowners to reduce water pollution that can restrict how much water can be used from our water sources
We will deliver these actions in stages over the coming years. Most of them will be completed by 2030 to address the forecast supply shortfall.
Safeguarding water supplies in a drought
We want to avoid spending large amounts of money on lots of expensive new water sources that we would only use very infrequently in a drought. To keep water bills as low as possible we plan to manage water demand during a drought by:
asking our customers to temporarily restrict their use of hosepipes and sprinklers. On average, we only expect to ask customers to do this once every 20 years.
asking our customers to temporarily restrict their use of hosepipes and sprinklers. On average, we only expect to ask customers to do this once every 20 years.
in a very severe drought, asking our customers to temporarily restrict other non-essential uses of water. On average, we only expect to ask customers to do this once every 50 years.
in a very severe drought, asking our customers to temporarily restrict other non-essential uses of water. On average, we only expect to ask customers to do this once every 50 years.
We believe our plan strikes the right balance between:
- keeping water bills as low as possible for our customers
- taking action to reduce demand for water
- developing cost-effective additional water sources
- very occasionally asking our customers to help safeguard essential water supplies by temporarily restricting non-essential water uses in drought conditions
Our plan will secure reliable water supplies for the future so we can continue to keep water supplies flowing to homes and businesses across Jersey.
“We have produced a robust long-term plan to ensure we continue to provide our customers with high quality, reliable water supplies for the future, supporting homes, businesses and the future economic prosperity of Jersey”.
Helier Smith, Chief Executive, Jersey Water
What have we done so far?
- We have shared our plan with the Government and other key stakeholders
- We are investigating the feasibility of increasing our desalination plant to cover the medium-term supply risk
- We are further improving our leakage performance by employing the best technology available
- We are starting a roll out of water meter upgrades to help customers manage their own usage
- We are engaging with our customers via workshops to share and discuss our plans