WHY YOUR DRINKING WATER IS AT RISK

THE FULL STORY
 

THE SOUTHERN WATER ‘HWTWR’ PLANS WILL ADD TREATED EFFLUENT FROM

THEIR BUDDS FARM SEWAGE WORKS INTO THE NEW THICKET RESERVOIR.

 

Wetter winters = more FREE rain

Collecting FREE rain = MORE drinking water

Southern Water and Private Equity 
In 2022, Southern Water—then majority owned by Macquarie Asset Management—entered a joint partnership with Portsmouth Water, offering to fund their new £340 million spring fed reservoir - subject to certain conditions. These included mandatory water transfers to Southern Water from 2030/31 and the recycling of final effluent from Budds Farm sewage works into the reservoir from 2034. The scheme was rebranded as the Hampshire Water Transfer and Water Recycling Scheme and designated a Nationally Important Significant Infrastructure Project, (NISIP) limiting local authority and public challenge.

 

There are many concerns such as the following:

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Environmental Impacts

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• This process is new to the UK

• It has a strong potential to contaminate our future drinking water.

• It requires the opening of an un-monitored,  un-engineered land fill site adjacent to the much protected Langstone Harbour (SPA, Ramsar, SSSI and others).

• No robust Habitats Regulation Assessment.

• Untreated ‘Forever chemicals’ could contaminate the new reservoir in perpetuity.

•  The three sites for recycling plants will have four times the concentration discharges into the Solent including forever chemicals and pharmaceuticals.  

• There is a risk that the beaches along the east coast of the Isle of Wight, and along Hayling and Witterings will be under threat, a threat not only to humans but to marine life.

• Piping will need to be installed across the South Downs National Park > READ MORE

• The new effluent recycling plant to the Pulborough Hardam WWTworks  will discharge greater concentrations into the River Rother which will then flow into the River Arun.

 

Construction Impacts

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• Building a four story factory requires opening the Broadmarsh landfill site which will increase the leaching of chemicals and pollutants into the SSSI, SPA, Ramsar protected Langstone Harbour.

• The project is only a drought resource. Yet the procedure requires the Southern Water to treat and pump more than 12 Olympic size swimming pools of water 40 km every day of the year- even when the water is not needed.

•  Operations will break all of Southern Water’s company net zero commitment by 2030.

• There is no commitment to monitor each and every piece of infrastructure on a daily basis.

• The history of Southern Water’s commitment to high levels of maintenance is publicly concerning with a long history of repeated plant failure.

•  Unlike the sustainable and forever asset of a new reservoir the planned life of the factory will require replacement every 40 years.

• All three new factory sites of Budds Farm, Littlehampton and Sandown on the Isle of Wight are all situated within Category 3 of the Climate Change Flood Zones > READ MORE

• None of these sites are expected to survive to 2100.

• There has been no mentioned of flood proofing any of the pumping stations.

• It is vital - due to the sensitivity of the reverse osmosis process - that the membranes are run 24 hours in order to ensure the plant operates at a ‘minimum flow’. Any stoppage is of great concern to the cost and integrity of the entire project.

 

Financial Implications

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• The English water companies are now mostly owned by private equity firms.

• Their sole motivation is for short-term profits.

• These include controversial tax avoidance strategies.

• This has resulted in eye-watering levels of asset-stripping increasing the debt of all the water companies including Southern Water since 1990 to £52bn.

• According to Ofwat water companies paid out £57bn in dividends since 1990.

• These monies were shared out amongst other legal entities within the hedge fund conglomerates, some of which are registered in tax havens to avoid UK tax liabilities.

• In addition to the Government’s 3.5% guaranteed investment return, the hedge fund owners can deduct the huge loan repayments from earnings to reduce reported profits – and therefore their tax bill > READ MORE

• All of the above is dependent upon the taxpayer ie you - paying higher water bills.

 

Governance and Public Confidence

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• Despite failing to meet key criteria, Ofwat has allowed the scheme to pass Gates 2 and 3 of their Rapid monitoring procedure.  

• This means customers are already funding development costs.

• Public consultations were poorly publicised and demonstrably incomplete with many  of responses disregarded.

• Trust in Southern Water is at an all-time low, raising serious concerns about the company’s ability to safely operate a complex potable reuse system that has not yet been proven at scale in the UK.

• There have been several articles by academics that the water companies have been using meretricious statements about the efficacy and reliability of their infrastructure > READ MORE

• This is about access to safe drinking water which is a ‘fundamental legally recognised human right essential for life, health, dignity and sustainable development’  UN

• If public confidence in tap water collapses, reliance on bottled water would be environmentally catastrophic, 150,000 tonnes of CO₂ annually > READ MORE

• Most SW and PW customers are NOT aware of SW’s plans for recycling effluent.

• There has been no direct mailing to customers or information with bills.

• Publicity for public consultations about the fundamental change of their water supply have been extremely poor. On 3rd November 2025 we learn that major Water Companies have been poisoning the drinking water of six million people because they have not reduced the level of ‘forever chemicals’ to an acceptable level. Drinking Water Inspectorate says ‘It could constitute a potential danger to human health’. 

• Past experience has shown that Southern Water have not had a credible, operational or tested business resilience plan against systemic operational failure.
   

ALTERNATIVES

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The UK is already experiencing higher rainfall due to climate change.  The country collects only about 1% of this free product.  It is a huge waste of a precious national resource.

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Over the last five years Southern Water has only replaced 0.1% per annum of water mains. Southern Water has been losing around 100 million litres of water per day through leakage—approximately 22% of supply - with meaningful reductions not planned until 2050.

 

Immediate, lower-impact alternatives include:   ​

• Moving abstraction from chalk streams such as the Itchen and Test, to the tidal limits.

• Store excess winter water in confined aquifers.

• Bring forward winter storage reservoir schemes such as planned for the River Adur scheme.

• Reservoirs could be built eg: on the Isle of Wight, and closer to where the water is needed ie: Southampton.

• Three reservoirs could be built the size of the Havant Thicket reservoir (cost £350 million) for the same price of £1.2 billion for the effluent recycling scheme.

• A more ambitious effort to increase existing pipe infrastructure, and set more challenging targets for control of leakage.
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These alternatives are environmentally sustainable which are being ignored because they do not come under the Government’s 3.5% guaranteed investment return for Southern Water - which would be the only way the company could continue to sustain its high salaries and ‘bonuses’. 

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