Feedback invited over Southern Water’s updated plans for controversial water recycling project

The project will create a new source of water to help supply more than 700,000 homes and businesses in the county. It say it will mean less water needs to be taken from the chalk streams of the rivers Test and Itchen, especially during a drought, protecting these rare and sensitive ecosystems.

However it has not been without controversy some concerns about the recycling and treatment of waste water to turn it into drinking water having been expressed.

As previously reported by The News, the proposed water recycling plant will take treated wastewater from Southern Water’s Budds Farm Wastewater Treatment Works and turn it into purified recycled water using advanced treatment techniques.

Up to 60 million litres a day of purified recycled water would then be pumped into Havant Thicket Reservoir to be stored. Water taken from the reservoir would be treated to strict drinking water standards before being sent into supply. The reservoir is being built by Portsmouth Water and funded over time by Southern Water’s water supply customer bills.

A public consultation on the Hampshire Water Transfer and Water Recycling Project was originally held last summer and Southern Water explained at the time that further extensive water quality modelling would be undertaken and consulted on.

The data from that modelling is now available and Southern Water is seeking people’s views on it, along with a few proposed design refinements, many of which have been made in response to public feedback at last summer’s consultation.

The supplementary consultation will be online-only and runs until April 4 2025 at www.hampshirewtwrp.co.uk . Feedback will help shape the development of the project, before the company submits a planning application later this year.