Sustainable Water Management

We work to conserve water, spend it wisely and use innovative methods for treating and recycling water. Staff living at Sheepdrove use about 100 litres of water per person, per day, which is better than the UK average of 150 litres/person/day.

This is brilliant, but as a business we use water on a much bigger scale, so it's important to take big steps in the way we use, re-use and recycle our water resources. We have installed a unique Reedbed Water Treatment System, a Dissolved Air Flotation (DAF) plant for water treatment, new water catchment systems, waterless urinals, aerating self-stop taps, dual heavy/light flush toilets, replaced water pipes, and we monitor consumption.

We have closed the ‘loop’ in the water cycle by returning treated water to replenish our local chalk water aquifer. A significant amount of water is recycled after treatment to make savings on water consumption. New dewponds in 2 fields provide livestock with water, which also saves on direct supply. We also took action to manage run-off and effluent better, so dirty yard water goes through a fuel-trap and into a lagoon, while our very-much cleaner roof water is directed to the reedbed system.

Our main achievement is water resource conservation and recycling but additionally, through our farm tours, literature, website and poster displays we actively promote the water conservation message, encouraging visitors, customers and other farmers to think positively about sustainable water use.

Why Choose Sustainable Water Management?

Overall we wanted to deal with water better and through appropriate changes, develop a whole-farm approach to water conservation, improve awareness with all staff, and create a progressive approach for the farm as a whole. Objectives included:

• Investigate water usage and ideas for efficiency as part of a sustainability study
• Identify weak areas of water efficiency and resolve them
• Take advantage of potential benefits and new opportunities for efficiency
• Identify and adopt cost-efficient solutions
• Establish everyday good practice, e.g. continuous monitoring for leaks at water troughs by staff
• Treat all of our waste water sustainably
• Create a resource for Biodiversity
• Generate wider sustainability benefits

We knew that our actions had to bring about positive results and we aimed to achieve very low impact on wider issues. We actually generated several important wider benefits associated with ‘cycling’ of water through the treatment systems, and conservation of water.

Environmental

• Protecting a finite resource of water : Water recycled back to groundwater, recharging chalk aquifer & closing the loop: this helps conserve local water resources.
• Reedbed System is Low-energy: Less energy-intensive treatment of wastewater as compared to conventional sewage disposal: no electricity needed, no motors, pumps or processes that need to be activated, waste is treated very close to source as opposed to being transported over long distances through expensive pipelines.
• Biodiversity at the Reedbed System : Creation of new wetland habitat on the farm encourages new species and also creating interlinked food webs including natural predators of crop pests.
• Enhanced landscape feature : Though large areas of standing water are unusual on chalk downland the contours of the sloping land & small valley where the feature is sited enable the reed bed to blend into the natural surroundings with the overall effect of enhancement of the landscape.

 

Social

• Educational resource : Acts as an educational model demonstrating sustainable water management. E.g. for farm visitors, farmers and as part of a sustainability study.
• Leisure : Provides attractive feature for visitor enjoyment.

 

Every Drop Counts!

All efficiency gained benefits the farm, we have a limited abstraction licence, so the less we use, the better. Water savings have wider environmental benefits, of course, but specifically for the business it gives us a comfort zone, flexibility in our operations and scale of operations, potential for future new enterprises, and so on.

Re-Using the Cleaned Water

We benefit from the new resource of treated water, and save a great deal of water through re-use of this. With use the lake overflow to irrigate our newly planted Willow Bed, which worked well because cuttings grew 6 feet in the first growing season!

We have also used our treated water to keep the pig wallows wet, and for watering trees around the farm during dry weather. Furthermore, we use treated water for moistening the compost mix, to create the right conditions for rapid biological activity in the composting process.

On another level, we probably gain something from the fact that our customers like to do business with a farm that considers the environment and tries to be sustainable.

So with all these benefits, we can say that sustainable use of water is definitely advantageous to the farm.

Further information

Sheepdrove's sustainable water management is featured in several publications:

• One Planet Living
• Smart Productivity - click to download a PDF.
• The Environment Agency Water Efficiency Awards 2005