Farmers criticised for profligate water use during hosepipe bands? Lindsay Hargreaves explains the difference
Thanks to BBC Farming Today and Lindsay Hargreaves
The Lark Abstractor Group (LAG) represents agricultural abstractors in the Lark catchment, near Bury St Edmunds in west Suffolk.
The River Lark crosses the border between Suffolk and Cambridgeshire and is a tributary of the River Great Ouse. It is an important source of water for agriculture and as such the Lark abstractors group formed in 1991 in response to a Section 57 notice issued to abstractors without prior warning. Although the group comprises 50 abstractors and 80 licences, it is an informal organisation and does not have any written constitution. It was established by Robin Upton but is now chaired by Lindsay Hargreaves. Its role is to keep members informed about abstraction issues and to meet regularly with the Environment Agency to address any current abstraction issues.
The group is actively engaged in work to improve flow in the River Lark and to increase resilience to future droughts.
As part of this effort, members of the Lark Abstractor Group collaborated with Cranfield University to explore the drought-related benefits of water sharing.
The modelling was undertaken using D-Risk, a water resource planning tool developed by Cranfield University, and completed at a variety of spatial scales.
Benefits were quantified in terms of modelled reductions in the probability of irrigation deficits and reductions in licenced “headroom”, as spare capacity in the system was re-allocated and used. The potential benefits of water sharing were found to increase with scale, but its impact was limited at high levels of drought severity due to regulatory drought management controls.
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