Havant residents voice concerns over £4m nitrate mitigation scheme at Warblington Farm

Members of the Havant Borough Residents’ Alliance, made up of residents’ and conservation groups in the area, have voiced their fears over proposals by Havant Borough Council to rewild Warblington Farm.

Under the scheme - announced last week - the farm is due to be slowly phased out of use as a dairy farm to reduce nitrogen pollution in the Solent, which accelerates algae growth in the water.

It will be the first project to make use of a £3.9m government-funded nitrate credit platform that will allow housing developers to buy credits to mitigate against nitrates created by new homes being built.

Alliance member Malinda Griffin, who also belongs to the Havant Tree Wardens group, fears it could lead to more nitrogen pollution.

She said: ‘The new development wastewater has been based on the daily average waste use per person of 110 litres a day, national statistics estimate 149 litres per person a day.

‘In these calculations there is significant potential for slippage, either more housing units may be built than this low nitrate-use farm can reality mitigate for, or levels of waste water generated from the thousands of new homes may each exceed 110 litres per person a day, either scenario will be damaging to the marine life and borough biodiversity and landscape.'

Pat Pile, from HBRA and Havant Friends of the Earth, added: ‘We do not think that it will reduce excess nitrates in our harbours which cause mats of algae, which damages sea grass.

‘More needs to be done by Southern Water to remove nitrates from the sewage.’

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However, a spokeswoman for Havant council said: ‘The vast majority of developments in Havant borough, particularly brownfield development and regeneration schemes are not able to achieve nutrient neutrality on site.

‘In such cases, developments will therefore need to contribute towards an off-site scheme, such as Warblington Farm. However, developments able to achieve nutrient neutrality on-site will first be expected to use on site measures to avoid an impact, before relying on off-site mitigation.

‘The use of the Warblington Farm site will be used to offset against additional nutrient loads on our coastline from future developments, and follows strict calculations as agreed with Natural England - the government's advisor on the natural landscape.’

A spokesman for Southern Water said: ‘Our wastewater treatment systems already greatly reduce nitrogen and other nutrients entering the Solent and all 11 of our sites are currently outperforming the environmental permits imposed by the Environment Agency which sets levels for nutrient removal.

‘Our business plan for the next five years has already been finalised with our regulator Ofwat – and we are looking at ways of working with partners to further reduce nutrients where we can.’

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