RPS 368 has arrived to remind construction sites that even groundwater needs paperwork, boundaries and a daily appointment with a meter. The pump has accepted the news calmly, although it would like the record to show that it was already working under pressure.
The Environment Agency statement applies to small scale groundwater abstraction used to dewater a construction site with a high water table, provided the abstraction lasts less than 270 days. Operators must notify the Environment Agency before beginning, keep records for two years and complete a hydrogeological impact assessment. The water must be returned without intervening use, as close as reasonably practicable to where it came from, and the quantity returned must be measured.
This is not permission to turn a building site into a private lake with a hosepipe and an optimistic attitude. The rules also require a written management system covering pollution, maintenance, accidents, incidents, non compliance and complaints. In other words, the paperwork must be prepared for the moment the water, the machinery or somebody’s confidence starts moving in an unexpected direction.
The statement places limits around protected sites, watercourses, wetlands, lawful water users and aquatic life. It also says the work must not cause subsidence or damage the status of a water body. The fictional site manager has therefore been informed that “just pump it somewhere else” is not an environmental strategy, even when delivered with the confidence of a person holding a laminated map.
There is something reassuring about a system that asks a pump to take daily readings at the same time each day. Most people struggle to maintain that level of commitment with breakfast. The water must be counted, the risks recorded and the return route understood. The invisible material beneath a building site has been given a timetable, a file and a firm objection to unauthorised wandering.
RPS 368 is practical regulation rather than a comedy prop. Its conditions exist to prevent harm to the environment, other water users and the people who will eventually discover that their new building was assembled on top of a badly managed puddle. The joke is that the pump has become the most accountable member of the project team, while everyone else is still looking for the latest version of the spreadsheet.
By the end, the site has a notification, an assessment, a management system, a meter and two years of records. All it needs now is planning permission for the pump to file a formal complaint about the filing cabinet.
Source: GOV.UK.
