Water company ordered to cut abstraction from four chalk streams by a third

A water company has been ordered to cut the amount of groundwater it pumps from beneath four Hertfordshire chalk streams by a third within 18 months, in the most sweeping use yet of the Environment Agency’s powers to revoke abstraction licences without compensation.

The order, published on Monday, covers boreholes feeding the Mimram, Beane, Ver and Gade, which together supply about 110m litres a day to homes in Hertfordshire and north London. Flow gauges on the Mimram at Panshanger recorded 26 litres a second in late August, the lowest figure since monitoring began in 1976 and about a fifth of the long-term average for the month. Three kilometres of the Beane above Watton-at-Stone dried out entirely for the second summer in a row.

The agency said it had concluded, after a four-year review, that the licences were “causing serious damage” to habitats listed as a priority under the Water Framework Directive, which remains in force in England. The company will have to reduce abstraction by 36m litres a day by April 2028, with the first 12m litres cut by next spring.

“Chalk streams are the one habitat for which England has global responsibility, and we have been treating the aquifer beneath them as a bottomless tank,” said Dr Imogen Hartley, the agency’s area director for Hertfordshire and north London. “This decision recognises that the river has a prior claim on the water.”

The company said it accepted the order but warned that the shortfall would have to be met from the Grafham Water reservoir and a new transfer main from the Lee valley, costing an estimated £190m, and that customers’ bills would “inevitably reflect” that. It had argued during the review that cuts should be phased over a decade.

Campaigners who have spent 15 years documenting the decline of the rivers welcomed the decision but said it should have come sooner. Gordon Peake, 68, chair of the River Beane Restoration Association, said the group had counted 11 dry summers on the upper river since 2005. “We have watched brown trout stranded in puddles the size of a dinner table while the pumps ran a few hundred yards away,” he said. “A third is a start. We would have asked for half.”

The agency has indicated that it is reviewing a further 31 abstraction licences on chalk streams in Hampshire, Dorset and Lincolnshire, and that decisions on at least eight are expected before the end of the year. Only about 220 chalk streams exist worldwide, and roughly 85% of them are in England.