LISTEN: Why we'll be drinking more treated sea water in future

Tuesday 11 April 2023

Jersey's sea water treatment plant will see its capacity increase by a third in the next three years – meaning that the facility will be able to produce 75% of the island’s daily demand for drinking water.

The desalination plant at La Moye is undergoing a major upgrade to increase its capacity and efficiency – part of a programme of work by Jersey Water to ensure the utility is able to meet the demands of an expected growing population.

In this month’s edition of Connect magazine, the company’s CEO, Helier Smith, sets out the challenges Jersey Water faces and the ways it intends to meet them.

In the short term, these include reducing the amount the water leaking from the network and encouraging islanders to be smarter with usage.

Longer term, it involves abstracting more water from boreholes which are currently contaminated with a toxic chemical linked to cancer, potentially increasing the size of an existing reservoir, and even making our wastewater drinkable.

Another significant challenge is the increasingly palpable threat of climate change, and the extreme weather that that brings, including intense rainfall and periods of drought. 

LISTEN...

Mr Smith shared his views in depth in a Bailiwick Podcast, where he explains why Jersey Water does not believe that lowering the levels of Grands Vaux reservoir is the way to protect homes further down the valley from flooding, which happened earlier this year...