Our catchment management team work hard to protect and enhance raw water quality and reliability in our drinking water catchments through sustainable catchment-based solutions that focus on protecting and enhancing the natural environment. In short, we strive to use nature and natural processes to clean water destined for our taps, before it is properly cleaned.
While NIW own a lot of land containing our catchments, a lot of our water drains from many different landowners. We work hard to develop good relationships with these landowners and managers through listening to and engaging with them and providing incentives and education where necessary.
Our team regularly facilitate tours of our Water Treatment Works, especially those which treat water coming directly off a catchment-based solution like peatland restoration. Visitors have included the general public, farming groups, community groups, primary and secondary school pupils, government ministers and MPs, sporting organisations, all levels of academia and we have attended W5 careers fayres, NI Science Festival, multiple regional agricultural shows all over NI and we host an annual lecture, peatland and treatment works tour as part of the University of Ulster Coleraine final year BSc Environmental Science curriculum.
Our team also work closely together with farmers and farming unions to promote best practice pesticide and slurry use through treatment works visits and invitations to farm incentives schemes. We work on the ground, often walking the land with the farmers and listening to their issues to see how we can work together to drive down pollution and run off into our watercourses.
Since April 2023, our Team has been a member of the Forever Mournes Partnership, a dedicated group of landowners and managers (Mourne Heritage Trust, National Trust, NI Water, and Woodland Trust NI) who formalized our commitment to work together across our collective land and interests in the Mourne Mountains in Co. Down. The Mourne mountains provide much of the drinking water for Belfast and beyond, so understanding the landscape, people and place is important to our catchment management there.
We have a vision for the future of the Mournes to be shared by the local community and all those who care about the area. To deliver the vision we will agree a long-term management plan for our public and charitable-owned lands, which everyone supports and has enough funds to ensure it can be realised. This is what Forever Mournes are working towards.
From July 2023 NI Water has offered farmers in the Clay Lake drinking water catchment area farm management measures to reduce the risk of water pollution and to make farm businesses more sustainable. The Farming for Water scheme focussed on reducing the amount of the herbicide MCPA, nutrients and soil getting into the watercourses connected to Clay Lake near Keady in Co. Armagh. The scheme provides 100% funded measures for landowners and farmers within the Clay Lake catchment area to make environmental/water quality improvements for their farm business. Our Catchment Officers have worked hard to develop good relationships with these farmers and has helped to improve their awareness of their local area as a drinking water source. Our ongoing work with farmers like these fosters sustainable behavioural change to ensure our catchments and environment continue to be protected into the future.