Rainfall across much of Yorkshire over the last week has led to a slight increase in groundwater and reservoir levels for the first time in eight months.
Yorkshire’s reservoirs stocks are now 30.8% – a 0.2% increase for the seven days to Monday. Heavy rainfall on Monday afternoon and into Tuesday morning will not yet have made its way through the catchment to the reservoirs.
Yorkshire Water said the rain was welcome, but hosepipe restrictions remain in place and will continue until reservoirs have recovered over the autumn and into winter.
Dave Kaye, Yorkshire Water’s director of water services, said: “We still have a long way to go to get our reservoir levels back to where they need to be. Reservoirs are still the lowest they have ever been for this time of year, and we need this wet weather to continue throughout the autumn and winter.
“We were recently granted a number of drought orders and permits which allow us to abstract more water from the Ouse and the Wharfe and to reduce the flows out of reservoirs in the south and north-west of the region. This will lower the burden on our reservoirs, allowing them to recover during periods of rainfall like we have been seeing.
“We’re also asking customers to continue doing what they can to save water so that our reservoirs can benefit as much as possible during periods of rainfall – they’ve been doing a brilliant job so far, with demand down 10%.
“At the same time, we’re going to continue working hard at bringing leakage down. We’ve accelerated our response to leaks since the implementation of the hosepipe ban – completing repairs 33% faster, on average.”
