United Utilities Group, PLC

We gather our water from a range of different sources, the main one being reservoirs. These are mostly in the Pennines and the Lake District. We also extract water from Lake Vyrnwy in Wales for customers in Merseyside and Cheshire, whilst the rest is from the River Dee, from boreholes and streams. Of the 1,900 million litres supplied everyday, well over half is from Cumbria and Wales. Our reservoirs: The two biggest reservoirs are Cumbria’s Thirlmere and Haweswater, and the latter holds more than 8,450 million litres of water - equivalent to around 33,800 Olympic swimming pools. Once we have collected the raw water we need to clean it and treat it at one of our 96 water treatment works. Then each day we release about 2,000 million litres of clean, treated water through our network of supply pipes, to our customers doors all across the North West. This network mixes fantastic pieces of engineering from our Victorian ancestors which still work well to this day and new multi million pound pipelines using the latest engineering techniques. Take the historic Vyrnwy Aqueduct which is a water pipeline running 68 miles from Lake Vyrnwy in Wales to Prescot Water Treatment Works. Thousands of families in Merseyside rely on it every day to provide them with water.