Devon and Cornwall farmers to be paid to store water on their land

A water company has said it will pay farmers in Devon and Cornwall to store water on their land.

South West Water (SWW) said it had received a £1m grant from Ofwat's innovation fund to deliver the initiative.

It said landowners would be paid to create ponds and restore natural sponges such as soils, woodlands and wetlands.

The project could help reduce overall water demand during droughts, SWW said.

SWW previously introduced a hosepipe ban which remains in place across Cornwall and in parts of Devon.

People in Devon have experienced two flash flooding incidents in 2023 with properties in Exebridge cut off in January and flood surges demolishing walls in Newton Poppleford earlier in May.

Carolyn Cadman, SWW's director of natural resources, said the idea was for farmers to use the water on their properties or sell it to others.

"The project will explore innovative ways of improving resilience to climate change, which we expect will bring more intense rain and more periods of drought," she said.

"Working in partnership we will test ways in which farmers can capture and store that intense rainfall on their land."

Dr Laurence Cauldrick, chief executive of the Westcountry Rivers Trust, which is supporting the project, said farmers' use of retained water could "alleviate demand on the mains supply".

He said stored water could also help recharge dry rivers via water companies.

SWW said most of the grant would be used to provide funding for trust staff to work with landowners over the next four years to trial different ways surface water could be stored and sold.

Their focus would be on learning how to build a network of water storage ponds and identify a system for valuing and trading stored water, the utility said.

It said the trust would initially approach farmers in the Tamar and Fowey catchments, but decisions on how many farmers would be involved or how funding would be allocated have not yet been made.

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