Glastonbury solves water supply headache

While the first day of Glastonbury will be a traditionally wet and muddy affair, there is good news at least for its water supplies.


The music festival faces a water supply challenge every year as it sees the local population increase by around 175,000 people who require more than one million gallons of water over a period of five days.

Spanning over eight miles, the site has around 700 hand basins and 100 standpipes located at various points to provide fresh water for drinking, washing and showers.

The growing popularity of the festival, has left the mains water supply struggling to cope with the increased demand.

Initially, the local authorities tried to address this issue in 1997 by laying a water mains from the main A361 down to Worthy Farm.

Although this helped it was still insufficient in dealing with peak demand between 10am and midday.

A solution was found in constructing a second reservoir on the site and ABB were contracted to install electronic data recorders to monitor the level, potable water feed supply and power used by the feed pumps.

ABB installed equipment including a SM500F and ABB WaterMaster flowmeters

The SM500F electronic data recorder enables Glastonbury to correlate the water supply against the supply company billing and provides a footprint of consumption rates at any time period during the festival for future planning.

The display system means that the reservoir levels can be monitored to provide an early warning of supply requirements and ensure dosing routes are in compliance and validate pump rates.

The WaterMaster flowmeters set the standard for water, wastewater, sewage and effluent flow measurement and management.

ABB WaterMaster has the world’s first on board verification system, providing users with the ability to perform in-situ verification across the complete range.

Festival infrastructure manager Phil Miller said: “The aim of the project was to reduce the amount of water brought in.

“The information collected is used for bill evaluation, giving us an accurate and easy to understand record of our usage.

“This ensures we don’t pay for any more water than we actually use and the reservoir is more environmentally-friendly, with fewer lorries coming onto the site.”

Alison Brown

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