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Strategic Response 17

Protecting our critical wastewater assets

Faced with an increased risk of disruption, for example, from an increase in severe weather as result of climate
change, and reduced customer acceptability of pollution events, we will improve the resilience of our critical
wastewater assets, which have high environmental and customer impacts of failure
SR17 - Protecting our critical wastewater assets with Sharon Ellwood

This strategic response includes:

We have assessed the resilience of critical
assets to: security, flooding, coastal erosion,
catastrophic failure, contamination, loss of
power and cyber threat and have identified
the following resilience measures:
• Complete security upgrades;
• Install cyber security measures;
• Install flood resilience;
• Improve power resilience;
• Upgrade control systems;
• Improve treatment flexibility;
• Make improvements to maintain access;
• Develop, test and refine business
continuity plans for key assets; and
• Provide coastal erosion prevention
(specifically measures at Cardiff
wastewater treatment works).
We have also recognised the need to
develop best practice resilience design and
operational standards.
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Research and Innovation

Welsh Water will explore the following
research topics to support this strategic
response:
• Undertake research into flood risk, using
a wider historical data record, and flood
resilience approaches to protecting and
operating assets during floods;
• Research sewage treatment processes,
which can recover or absorb shocks such
as load or flow peaks;
• Research approaches to recovery after
major disruptions to assets to better
inform contingency planning; and
• Understand small scale treatment
processes that may efficiently serve
smaller communities.
We will work with Category 1 and 2
emergency responders on carrying out this
research.

Find out more 

If you would like to find out more about all the Strategic Responses please CLICK HERE
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