Water UK

It's very difficult not to start humming "Fog on the Tyne, it's all mine, all mine" when there is actual fog on the actual Tyne, and you are admiring the view, whilst walking over a bridge on your way to an event on the Gateshead side of the river. I couldn't linger to finish the song, however; the final Rural Economy and Land Use conference was about to start.

This research programme, also known as Relu, started in 2003, aimed at bringing people together from different academic disciplines, to try to find answers to some of the social, economic, environmental and technological challenges facing the countryside. Non-academics might think that this is a fairly easy process, involving a room, a table and some chairs, and possibly some coffee; however, as some of the researchers involved somewhat ruefully pointed out, it's not quite that easy. Take the word 'model', which proved to be a stumbling block for one particular project. For the social scientists, a model was concept; for the natural scientists, it was a research tool to be filled with data. Each discipline had to learn each other's way of working to get results.

Supporting a plethora of mosses on Exmoor, providing grouse with somewhere cool and boggy to live, or helping farmers use pesticides more efficiently and cost effectively - the water industry has a good story to tell when it comes to catchment management.

Pharmaceuticals are a feature of modern society. We take medication to treat day-to-day minor ailments and more severe conditions; some use substances for ‘recreational’ purposes; and livestock and domesticated animals are dosed routinely to prevent pests, maximise yields or increase productivity.

In February ground-breaking legislation was passed by Welsh Assembly Government that will require all new Welsh properties to have fire sprinklers installed. On the face of it, this is a life-saving initiative which will be welcomed by many and which is likely eventually to be followed in England. Indeed for water companies, fighting fires in their early stages through the activation of a sprinkler will reduce the demand on the network put on by fire tenders at the time of a more established incident and reduce the environmental impacts of wash water run-off. The difficulty arises with the details of providing and maintaining suitable water supplies.

There aren't many water company meetings where a central theme of the discussion is how much the attendees love, or indeed hate, cows. But then catchment management is relatively new on the business agenda.