Yorkshire Water 2 (Health & Safety): Powerpoint Presentation Script Slide 1 – Yorkshire Water Logo Welcome and introduce yourself Slide 2 – Health and Safety Introductory slide Slide 3 – Our Regulators Water is a heavily-regulated industry – although we are a private company, we provide a very public service. Three official regulators – an economic one, an environmental one and a water quality one The Office of Water Services or Ofwat - is the economic regulator. Every five years Ofwat decides what our future investment programme should be and tells us by how much we should raise or lower prices to fund it. The Environment Agency - or EA – is the environmental regulator. We work with the EA to ensure that we take water from and return it to the environment in a sustainable way. The Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI) monitors the quality of the UK’s tap water. We also work very closely with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) which is responsible for protecting the safety and wellbeing of our employees and contractors. Slide 4 – Leakage Detection Leakage detection is mostly undertaken late at night when the flows are low and the towns and cities are quieter. Electronic sounding equipment is used to detect leaks by measuring the level of noise being made by the leak We are making significant progress in the amount of water lost from our mains. During the last 10 years we have reduced our leakage by 45%, and we have consistently out-performed the Government’s mandatory leakage reduction targets. Slide 5 – Water Quality Throughout the Treatment process we continuously monitor quality and the amounts of chemicals added by sophisticated on line monitors which collect data and control the process 24 hours a day, 365 days a year . We take water quality samples 365 days of the year; these are from our raw water reservoirs, our water treatment works, our service reservoirs and from random customer address. This means about 600,000 samples each year and about 6 Million different tests. This is to check that quality is the best it possible ever at every stage of treatment and in distribution.
1
Slide 6 – Large Interceptor Sewers Located at Meadowhall, Sheffield (near shopping centre). These sewers were constructed to take the sewage from large areas of Sheffield to Blackburn Meadows Sewage Treatment Works Slide 7 – Scale of our Operations Engineers can be seen walking down a new large diameter sewer in order to check the condition and workmanship before putting it into service. We handle more than 1.7 million tonnes of waste water and trade effluent every year- it’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it! Our role is to transport it through 32,000 km’s of sewers to one of our 624 sewage treatment works where it is cleaned before being pumped back into the region’s rivers. Since privatisation in 1989 we have spent more than a billion pounds upgrading our waste water treatment works. Slide 8 – Burst Pipe at Rooley Lane, Bradford Water is very heavy and we have to move it under great pressure – that’s why some small bursts can appear quite spectacular That includes Yorkshire Water – we are working hard to reduce the amount of water lost through leaks on our system We have cut leakage by more than 45% over the past decade and it continues to be a priority for us. We have successfully met or beaten the targets set for us by the Government every year for the past ten years. Although we still lose a fifth of our water through leaks, the fact is it is more economical to invest in new water resources and reducing consumption, than it is to reduce leakage to zero – leakage is an expensive problem to tackle. Slide 9 – Water Mains Rehabilitation Mains rehabilitation is the cleaning, relining or replacing of our water mains to improve the quality of the region’s drinking water. We are in the process of completing a massive programme of improvements across the region. When we inherited the system at privatisation in 1989, a lot of the pipes were old cast iron mains that had deteriorated over time. This meant that discoloration was common place and that there were lots of bursts and leaks. Since 1989 we have upgraded thousands of kilometres of mains. To carry out this work we often had to shut customers’ water supplies off for up to 36 hours at a time. Thanks to new technology, we have now managed to reduce this considerably. By 2010, we would like to be in a position where we never have to shut customers’ supplies off to carry out repairs – we’ll aim to repair them without any interruptions.
2
Slide 10 – Water Safety Whilst life is impossible without water, water can also be very dangerous. Slide 11 – Water Safety Whilst we are always pleased to have people visiting our reservoirs, we do stress that you must obey the signs and be aware of the dangers. On hot days, a dip in a reservoir may appear like a great way to cool down. Although the still water may seem harmless, it’s actually an insidious killer which can claim a life in minutes! What are the dangers? • • • • Strong Currents - these lurk beneath the surface, particularly if water is being drawn through massive pipes beneath the surface. The Cold & Hyperventilation - often, when fatalities have occurred in the past, it’s been the temperature of the water which has been the most significant factor. Reservoirs are deep and the water in them doesn’t ebb or flow like in rivers or the sea so the temperature rarely rises much above 12C. Immersion is enough to take most people’s breath away but what they probably don’t realise is that this sensation is their body’s natural defences kicking in – and they will only protect a swimmer for a matter of minutes, no matter how confident they are in the water. One of the first signs of trouble is hyperventilation as the body tries to increase the flow of oxygen into the blood to help stave off the cold but, if the swimmer remains in the water, the body will begin to shut down to protect the vital organs. Muscles will go into cramp and suddenly it’s no longer possible to swim. The victim will try to fight to stay on the surface but, if help doesn’t arrive within seconds, they will be drawn inexorably underwater, even though they may still be fully conscious and aware of what’s happening.
•
Slide 12 – Guess the sign game. Ask the children to guess what the signs mean. Press return for each sign and then its meaning to come up. There are 10 in total
3