Water Gain Net Survey

FROM WESTCOUNTRY RIVERS TRUST

Water Net Gain Survey

Water Net Gain is a new partnership project exploring the ways we can support farmers to bolster drought affected water supplies and ease associated river health pressures.

In 2022, the Westcountry had first-hand experience of the impacts of drought and water use restrictions. These extreme events are likely to become more frequent in future. Through this project, we are co-designing a catchment scheme where farmers are paid to store water on their land in new ponds and lakes that can act as water ‘batteries’.

We are looking to understand how this could improve their farms water resilience as well as wider society and rivers. For more information take a look at our project webpage https://wrt.org.uk/project/water-net-gain/

We are focusing our early research on Westcountry dairy farms as a test case to develop how a scheme may work. This can then be adapted to other farming systems in other regions that require high water inputs. To understand how effective the natural water ‘batteries’ may be on dairy farms, we first need to understand how water is currently used.  

Please help us by sharing this online survey about water requirements (six minutes) with dairy farmers in your catchments, or please complete the survey if you are a dairy farmer. The survey will be live from the 8 – 21 January. 

Survey link: https://forms.office.com/e/3pa6btctBg

If you’d like to hear more about the project and receive occasional updates via the project mailing list, please do get in touch via freya@wrt.org.uk.

This project is funded by the third Ofwat Innovation Fund Water Breakthrough Challenge.