Regional Water Authorities Research Articles

Pollution problems arising from the 1975–76 drought

The paper considers the gradual transition from the ‘normal’ quality state of surface and ground waters and discusses the rapid change in the quality of these waters with the onset of heavy rain towards the end of August 1976. Many activities within the hydrological cycle were affected directly and indirectly by the drought, as for example treatment of sewage, of water for supply, accelerated eutrophication of reservoirs, and river waters and of fisheries. The degree to which these were influenced by the changing quality and diminishing water quantity resources is described. Some of the work carried out to alleviate and reduce the impact of the drought on water quantity and quality resources is mentioned and the problems which continue to affect the operations of regional water authorities into the present year as a result of the drought are referred to.

Innovative Management Concept for 208 Planning

The Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 establish area-wide (208) water quality planning requirements. Integral to 208 planning is the determination of a management structure to implement the plan. Criteria are presented to assist in the evaluation of alternative management structure. The recent development in England and Wales of regional water authorities is offered as one example of an innovative water management structure. It may offer useful information for 208 management structure planning currently underway throughout this country.

The Politics of London Water

TODAY Londoners enjoy a water supply which has attained a very high standard of both quality and quantity. But this situation has not come in a day. The supply of water in London has always been the subject of political contests of some kind and there is a continuity in London's fight for water. Londoners had to fight protracted battles for control over their water supply in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century the demand has occasionally come for the organisation of water supply in Greater London under a unified democratic management, but nothing has actually emerged until very recently, when Greater L<?ndon'swater supply has been vested in one of the newly-created Regional Water Authorities. The politics of water supply in Greater London, first in the nineteenth century and then in the twentieth, has been a contest between private enterprise and public ownership and management, bet\veen municipalisation and administration by an ad hoc board, between metropolitan government and local autonomy. The strategies adopted by the various participants in these contests at different times have varied in accordance with their political ideologies, their ideas of the public interest, and above all, the political circumstances of the time. The politics of London water have belonged in some sense throughout to the politics of London government reform. An attempt is made here, first, to analyse the political characteristics of London's fight for water and to narrate briefly its three different phases; and, secondly, to elucidate the decision-making process, and to test certain current generalisations about politics and social reform and the growth of the administrative state in the nineteenth-century Britain; finally, the inadequacy of the present system of management of London water supply is discussed, and some lessons are derived. The process by which a particular business or trade is recognised in Britain as a 'public utility' is political. Any private enterprise becomes a public utility whenever parliament considers it so closely connected with the public interest as to justify public regulation, and ownership, if necessary. Competition among London's water companies, which had been justified in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in terms of the benefits that consumers might receive, failed to produce the intended results as London was districted among eight ,vater companies through private agreements in the first half of the nineteenth century.! By 1850 parliament recognised that the com-

OIL POLLUTION OF INLAND WATERS IN ENGLAND AND WALES

ABSTRACT The author describes the setting up of ten regional water authorities in England and Wales with the duty of managing water, from the supply of drinking water to the treatment of sewage and the control of rivers. The new Control of Pollution Act 1974 is examined, particularly with regard to the powers it contains for the water authorities to take action if oil pollution occurs. This includes both action to stop discharges containing oil and also to remove oil once it has entered a river. The author discusses the results of a survey to assess what are the main causes of oil pollution and suggests means of reducing these. Finally, there is a description of a number of particularly significant cases of oil pollution and the steps taken to prevent recurrences.

WATER AND WATER PROBLEMS IN THE SOUTHWEST FLORIDA WATER MANAGEMENT DISTRICT AND SOME POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS1

ABSTRACT: It is estimated that by about 1984 water demand in the District will nearly equal Nature's average annual replenishment of the supply and that, thereafter, unless means are developed to augment our in‐District resources, water mining will be required on a grand scale. Sources of augmentation include: (1) reduction of wastes; (2) industrial recycling of previously‐used water; (3) use of municipal sewage effluents; (4) desalination of brackish ground water; (5) aquifer recharge from all available, high‐quality sources, particularly flood waters; and (6) importation of excess waters from such out‐of‐District sources as the lower courses of the Suwannee and Apalachicola Rivers. To achieve maximum beneficial uses of in‐District sources a regional water and sewer authority is needed that can develop and transmit water from all available sources to the various county and city systems on a wholesale basis. It is envisioned that such a supply system would tie together all production sources, much as the electrical generation and supply systems are currently organized into regional electric power hookups. At least two bills are currently before the Florida Legislature to achieve these goals.

Multilevel optimization for conjunctive use of groundwater and surface water

This study aims at developing a general systems analysis approach, other than straight simulation methods, for handling the complex problem of optimal conjunctive use of groundwater and surface water resources. A two‐dimensional asymmetrical grid network model is chosen to represent the aquifer system. A water resource management problem is considered for a hypothetical region that is composed of several adjoining subregions over a common aquifer basin. It is suggested that the regional water authority regulate optimally the intersubregional aquifer boundary conditions and impose a pumping tax on the local water agencies of the subregions. The pumping tax will provide the revenue for the regional authority to recharge the aquifer basin. The solution is implemented by a completely decentralized decision‐making structure of a two‐level hierarchy.

INFORMAL DISCUSSION. EDUCATION, TRAINING AND COMMUNICATION IN HYDROLOGY, AND THE LIKELY NEEDS OF THE REGIONAL WATER AUTHORITIES.

"INFORMAL DISCUSSION. EDUCATION, TRAINING AND COMMUNICATION IN HYDROLOGY, AND THE LIKELY NEEDS OF THE REGIONAL WATER AUTHORITIES.." Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, 56(3), pp. 401–402