East Suffolk Water Abstractors Group (ESWAG)

ESWAG formed in 1996 in response to drought restrictions and has developed a “working with” approach with the local EA office. Now representing 102 members with 223 abstraction licenses, which provide 16,724,000 m³ annual licensed abstraction volume, representing 91% of the agricultural volume abstracted from the catchment.

Farming highly productive, light soils in areas close to the east Suffolk coastline, ESWAG members are critically dependent on sustainable, reliable sources of water to irrigate their crops.

At the same time, the East Suffolk Internal Drainage Board (IDB) pumps large volumes of water from low lying parts of the district into the sea, to prevent flooding. ESWAG members in the Kingsfleet catchment have capitalised on this resource and developed a scheme to recycle water from the IDB system.

Using a new 12km pipeline, this takes water from the bottom of the catchment which would normally be pumped into the Deben estuary and transfers it back upstream into a series of on-farm storage reservoirs. The scheme allows winter surpluses to be used to meet agricultural demand in the following summer, delivering enhanced environmental outcomes as well as economic benefits.

In addition to the pipeline transfer, the scheme has piloted managed aquifer recharge (MAR) as an alternative to above-ground reservoir storage, resulting in the first scheme of its type to be permitted in England.