riverwater

[gardening in mind]

hi all, does anyone know if you need some sort of license to pump water from a river for your,e plots ? we have a small petrol pump and a small river running between us and a housing estate which overlooks the plots.In the house nearest us is a bit of a jobsworth who would love to tell us we cant collect water by pumping it out .Just wondered if anyone knows the legality of the matter really?

[SarzWix]

Umm, yes, I think you do need a licence to extract water. I would check carefully before you do it Maybe the Environment Agency website will have the answer?

[Matt.]

Yeah you should really have a licence but I don't think these are for public use. I think thats only for the water companies etc or maybe large industrial/farming. The amount of water you'd extract is so small its irrelevant even if you could count it effectively.

Just do it anyway - I would. Even if your neighbour moans nobody is going to give a toss. To keep it more subtle you can always use it to fill water butts rather than liberally dousing your entire plot. This would take minutes so no room for complaining from your neighbour.

An alternative if the engine is too noisy you can get a 12v bilge pump and run from a car battery. These can pump up to 50 litres per min so plenty of water in 30 mins or so. I can vouch first hand this works well

A final solution would be an eco friendly ram pump. You need a decent flow rate to create the pressure but this will just run and run forever supplying you with endless water. They made one on the "its not easy being green" program.

Good luck and get on using a very fortunate natural resource.

[PAULW]

I went to a college in Dorset that has a lake, the lake is fed from a side stream off the main river the water flows into the lake over a weir and back into the main river, they do not use it to water cattle or lawns it is just there to look at
BUT
the college has to pay for a licence to extract water

[brooklynodog]

Our lottie is adjacent to a small river/stream and the EA "restrict" us to 2 cubic metres of water per plot (50 on site) per day!! You could fill a swimming pool with that volume, but we dont need a licence as far as I am aware

[bluemoon]

If you're using river water for your veg please make sure that you thoroughly wash everything before you eat it, especially lettuce and the like that isn't cooked first. Quite apart from pollutants (everything from toxic chemicals to rat pee) and bacteria (and among other things we're talking typhoid and cholera here) I'd be very wary of liver flukes. Trouble is OH used to work in this field and I've heard all the horror stories! Good thing I didn't marry a doctor or I'd be a complete hypochondriac!

[NOG]

I fully agree with the post above post...water with rat pee in can give you wiles disease. Also you will need to know what else has been put in it up stream....

A for extraction you will need a licance from the local water company.

[gardening in mind]

thanks everyone for your'e advice . we have contacted the environment agency and they said pump away ,theyre not interested unless you are extracting more than 4000 gallons a day! we have about an acre or so of allotment to water(we are a mental health charity and the allotment project just expanded over the last few years)so we have to use the river or lose produce in really dry spells. Anyway thanks everyone for the input.

[NOG]

Its good that you got an offical agreement to extract..

[Matt.]

Thats brilliant news and I'm amazed it was so simple. I wonder is that a standard response or is it on a case by case basis?

[gardening in mind]

No idea Matt, the project manager phoned the environment agency and got the go ahead, however I wonder if a drought would change our permission to extract water? Maybe we will give them another phone call to check .