Water use

The issue: Water is essential to a healthy environment and therefore a valuable resource that needs to be used sparingly. Airports use significant amounts of water in their infrastructure and construction operations.

Businesses with high levels of water use can put pressure on regional resources that also need to supply residential areas. Some regional resources are already known to be under stress from climate change since it increases the likelihood of droughts.

Our approach: BAA Heathrow takes a responsible approach to water consumption. Our approach is to understand how much is used where and implement saving schemes. Key elements of our strategy include:

• Regular monitoring and leak detection
• Efficient use of water is incorporated into new building design with the introduction of low water technologies.

Water conservation initiatives within the existing buildings where practically and financially viable.

Our performance: The table below show the total water consumed and the per passenger volume.

Both total water consumption and per passenger use are going up because of the major construction work going on at T5. Construction activities typically use large volumes of water in mixing cement etc, and given the scale of the project, it has substantially increased the airport’s total usage. Now that the major construction works have been completed, it is expected that the total water use will decline somewhat, and will more accurately reflect the terminal use which includes sanitary use, plane washing etc.

Case study - Water saving at Terminal 5
In designing Terminal 5, a challenging target of 25 litres per passenger was set and it is currently predicted that we will be able to save even more water than our initial target through the system developed. Terminal 5 will use two separate water systems – one for drinkable (‘potable’) water and one for activities such as toilet flushing and irrigation. The non-potable water is sourced from Terminal 5’s own rainwater harvesting scheme and groundwater boreholes, reducing the demand from the public water supply by 70%.

The system developed is able to capture and reuse 85% of the rainfall that falls on the entire Terminal 5 catchment. In addition, Terminal 5 has two boreholes drilled into the Chalk aquifer, 150 metres below the site. The boreholes were commissioned early during the construction phase and have been used to supply water for construction activities.

Additional water saving devices in place at the new terminal include all toilets with dual flush; taps and showers with water saving devices such as automatic on and off sensors and aerated flow; and the British Airways CIP lounge has vacuum-flush toilets which use just 1.2 litres per flush.

Our plans:
Target 2007: To reduce water consumption by 2% against the business as usual forecast between January and December 2007, through improvements in water conservation.

Objectives:

• To continue to focus on investigating and repairing any pipe leakages
• To incorporate water efficiency measures within our existing buildings as opportunities arise
• To ensure that our new developments are designed to use water efficiently.