Increasing the capacity of our water system improves our resilience to surges in water demand and drought. We distribute drinking water to our customers through an extensive system which includes over 20 drinking water treatment works, over 600 reservoirs (impounding and service) and a network of 27,000km of water mains. We will continue to invest in increased water production capacity and new strategic pipelines to enable water to be transferred between regions.
We invested £13m to improve the security of the water supply at Drumaroad water treatment works, Castlewellan, County Down. This major programme of work involved the construction of a new water storage tank. This treatment works is supplied by water from Silent Valley reservoir and delivers around 140 million litres of water every day to over 200,000 homes in County Down and Belfast. It is having a positive impact on the lives of up to 540,000 people, a quarter of the Northern Ireland population, who can benefit from it, particularly in extreme weather.