A day in the life taking care of Yorkshire’s water

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A person wearing a orange hi vis jacket smiles in an office environment — Beth Izatt, Catchment Technical Specialist at Yorkshire Water (Yorkshire Water)

By Bethany Izatt, Catchment Technical Specialist at Yorkshire Water

Most people have an idea of what a water company does. On the surface, it sounds simple – we manage the region’s water. But at Yorkshire Water, it’s so much more than that. We take care of Yorkshire’s most valuable natural resource. We supply 1.3 billion litres of fresh tap water every day. We manage 32,000km of clean water pipes and 53,000km of sewer network. We collect 2.2 billion litres of wastewater and rainwater a day and safely return it back to the environment. We manage 28,000 hectares of land and countryside, making us the second largest landowner in Yorkshire. We’re an integral part of Yorkshire life and millions of people who live and work here rely upon us, every single day.

I’m Beth Izatt, a catchment technical specialist at Yorkshire Water. In a nutshell, I look after the raw water at the very start of the cycle. Raw water is what we collect from our catchments, this could be a reservoir, a river or a borehole - and that’s usually where you’ll find me!

I joined Yorkshire Water as a water quality scientist three years ago, shortly after completing a two-week placement within the biosecurity team, where I was able to get an idea of the different business areas and jobs in the company. It just goes to show that even if your first role isn’t directly linked to your studies or passion, it's always worth getting a foot in the door and working towards your goal from there.

A spillway, woodland and moorland — Spillway at Scar House Reservoir (Yorkshire Water)

The water sector features some pretty niche lines of work, so until you really start looking and pursuing your passion, you might have never thought that what you love would even be someone’s job - I certainly didn’t! I found my passion for all things water while studying BSc Geography at the University of Leeds. During my undergraduate degree I discovered I was drawn to learning about rivers, water quality and hydrology. From there I completed my master’s degree in MSc River Basin Management and Dynamics with GIS (Geographic Information Systems).

A person in full PPE — Beth kitted out in PPE standing inside an empty underground service reservoir (Yorkshire Water)

I’ve been in my current role as a catchment technical specialist for a few months now. Being a catchment technical specialist involves risk assessing the raw water catchments (rivers, reservoirs or boreholes) and monitoring and mitigating any potential water quality risks that could impact abstraction points. These risks could be agricultural, urban or industry related. It also involves spotting any emerging pollutants, which requires a lot of investigation into agricultural and urban catchments for pesticides and compounds such as PFAS (Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances), also known as forever chemicals, to ensure we mitigate these types of pollutants.

A typical day in my role involves working on our drinking water safety plans. I will go and investigate a catchment in the morning and map any potential risks within that catchment related to routine water quality sampling that could be impacting our water sources. I work really closely with water quality scientists, and they will then collate sample results and compare them with data from the last 3-5 years. We will take the findings to a risk review in the afternoon to assess whether those potential risks are having an impact on the water treatment works and how we could mitigate them.

A person in orange hi vis taking samples from the river Hull on a bright sunny day — Beth taking intake samples from the river Hull (Yorkshire Water)

I’m really lucky and I get to travel across Yorkshire in my role, so I get to see lots of the beautiful countryside and coastline. If I'm not out in the countryside, I will be working on GIS mapping of the catchments, which involves weighing out the pollutant risks within a catchment, that could impact on what we’re seeing in the water quality data. I’ll then head out and take samples from the catchment to see if we can identify pollution sources along small tributaries or streams are impacting the main treatment intake.

I’ve also had the opportunity to go into huge underground reservoirs to see how they operate (while they’re out of service to be cleaned) and it’s always fun getting involved with the hands-on operational side. We also get involved in agricultural events and shows through partnership schemes, which are really interesting. We work closely with various stakeholders, for example, Catchment Sensitive Farming (CSF) who focus on improving farm infrastructure, farming best practice and provide support for farmers to become more sustainable. Those partnerships then provide us with the opportunity to talk to farmers about the importance of working together and to create multiple benefits for the environment, like improving soil health and water quality.

Yorkshire Water is a really exciting place to work, it's so varied and you get to see the behind-the-scenes of how the infrastructure works together before you run your tap or flush your loo.

To find out more about the type of work I do, you can watch our Science Behind series on YouTube. Here’s a couple I featured in when I was a water quality scientist: