By Rachel Anderson
Wading through oceans of paperwork for yet another piece of government legislation is probably even less appealing than discovering a new pest on your crops. However, those of you who water your plants using drip (trickle) irrigation will have to valiantly set sail on a new voyage. On this journey, you’ll be retracing your water usage over the past seven years.
This is because the government has decided that – as part of a process known as “new authorisations” – drip irrigation (when carried out at a rate of more than 20m3 per 24 hours) should now be a licensable activity. Up until now, growers who have watered their crops this way using a non-mains water source such as a bore hole have not needed a formal abstraction licence. But given the water stress experienced in some parts of the UK, this old system has – says the government – made it difficult to manage our scarce water resources effectively.
Paul Hammett, National Farmers’ Union (NFU) national water resources specialist, explains: “There’s going to be more pressure surrounding water use, particular in built-up areas (such as in the south east) where a lot of growers are based. So, the situation that we are now in is that all the growers who use trickle irrigation, and who have done so perfectly lawfully for years, now need to apply for an abstraction licence before December 31, 2019.”
John Adlam, managing director of horticultural consultancy, Dove Associates, tells me that more than 200 ornamental growers are affected by this law – as are another 500 or so who are currently (and legally) using an existing abstraction licence to both spray and drip-irrigate their crops. The latter group, he says, “will need to have their licence amended to reflect the proportions of water they use for trickle and for spray.”
And it’s not just drip irrigation that’s affected. Other practices that are commonly used in production horticulture now require a licence. These include, for example:
- capillary matting
- hydroponic growing
- ebb and flood
- flood irrigation
How to set sail
To apply for a licence, growers need to provide records of their water usage from 2010 until 2017. But before you start battening down the hatches, Paul reassures you that – thanks to intensive lobbying by the NFU – the EA has promised to be quite flexible regarding the different types of evidence that growers must produce.
If you need to apply for a new abstraction licence click here
To avoid being cast away, Nicola Dunn – a resource management scientist for Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB), advises growers to get your applications in sooner rather later. “There’s a bit of a process to go through with the Environment Agency (EA). If people are doing it next December that will be too late.”
Paul adds: “Anyone who misses the deadline takes their chances on [having to acquire] a new licence, and that is not always easy to get. In many parts of the country getting new or additional licences is quite tricky. So, this deadline is crucial.”
A stormy journey ahead?
Paul also notes that, in most cases, the EA will provide a licence based on your historical maximum [use] during the last seven years – although, in some cases, conditions may be included to (for example) protect rivers at very low flows. Arguably, troubled waters may be on the horizon if you want to significantly expand your business in future. As Paul observes: “If you want to expand your business by ten per cent, where are you going to get your extra ten per cent of water from?”
Fortunately, many visionary growers have had the foresight to put water efficiency measures, such as rainwater harvesting systems, in place. For those who have not yet done this but are interested in doing so, RDPE Countryside Productivity Scheme grants are available – but the deadline for current applications is June 29, 2018.