‘Dispelling the Myth’ is a collaborative water resources project between the Environment Agency and Groundwork Greater Manchester, supported by United Utilities and the Rivers Trust CaBA National Support Team. The project’s aim is to ignite conversations about water resources in the Northwest providing a bank of resources for the catchment partnerships across the region (please see the downloadable resources below).

Water is our most precious resource, sustaining all life and livelihoods. If all the world’s freshwater was contained in a jug, the amount available for use could be represented as a single drop.

These water resources are just as precious in the Northwest.  Although we are a region with a reputation for plentiful rainfall, prolonged dry weather and drought can still cause problems for people and the environment, as experienced in 2018, 2020, 2022 and in the summer of 2023.

With pressure on our water resources and water environment increasing due to the impacts of climate change and population and economic growth, we ALL need to play our part and recognise the need to carefully manage our individual and collective use of water, looking after every drop.

The Dispelling the Myth project offers a collection of useful tools to those who want to explore this subject and work with stakeholders to plan for action based on understanding. The project consists of three main outputs that can be utilised by catchment partnerships and others:

The project’s informative video is a powerful engagement tool for catchment partnerships.  It highlights the challenges faced by the region and emphasises the importance of conscious water management.

This editable resource and associated guidance document can be used alongside the video to bring together water resources evidence and information in a cohesive narrative, supporting stakeholder engagement and informed decision making.

The project’s editable resource library contains links to useful websites, documents, and more, providing catchment partnerships with a wealth of knowledge about water as a vital resource.

We hope that the outputs produced through the project will inspire and support consideration of water resources within catchment partnerships in the northwest and provide a case study for the wider CaBA (Catchment Based Approach) Network.

For further information about this phase of the project, and the communication, training and development activities we are undertaking in 2023 within phase 2, please contact project managers:

Paula Pearson: paula.pearson@environment-agency.gov.uk

Aimee Brough: aimee.brough@groundwork.org.uk

Let’s come together to protect our most precious resource – water – today and for generations to come.