Climate Change Effects
The climate is changing. The two elements that can change are rainfall and temperature. It can get wetter or drier and hotter or colder. This means we have four possible combinations. Wetter and hotter, wetter and colder, drier and hotter or drier and colder.
Not all scientists agree about exactly what those changes will be but they are in agreement that the climate will change and the changes will causes problems.
If it becomes drier we may have problems with having enough water so learning how to save water is very important. If it becomes wetter then we may have problems with flooding. We have already noticed in the UK increasingly heavy or intense rainstorms.
Currently many of our sewers are combined sewers which means the ‘foul water’ (from our homes and businesses) goes into the same network of pipes as the surface water (rainwater from roofs and roads). When we have heavy rainfall all of this extra water goes into our sewer network and if there is too much it will overflow and cause flooding. Because some of this water is wastewater from our houses this is polluted water.
If we were creating the sewer network today we would have two separate systems – one for the rainwater or surface water and another for the waste water or sewage. But with 27,000km of sewer pipes this obviously is not a practical solution.
RainScape
Welsh Water has developed an innovative scheme called RainScape to reduce the surface water entering our sewers and where possible catch, redirect and slow down the speed at which surface water enters the sewer network, using a range of techniques that we call ‘RainScape solutions’.
You can find out more about rainscape in the downloadable info sheets and videos below.