With the drought well and truly over in most parts of the country, farmers in the northeast are still feeling the effects with many wells under pressure.

“Water table levels at several monitoring locations along the east coast are at the lowest level on record following the dry summer,” a spokesperson from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency said. “Groundwater recovery is a much slower process than surface storage and whilst recent rainfall has helped to ease the situation in many locations across the country there are a number of groundwater source private water supplies which continue to be affected in the northeast and Angus regions.”

Struggle

Iain Chapman who farms in Aberdeenshire has been dealing with effects of low water tables since July: “The wells are nearly able to keep up to the demand now. We have been hauling water to stock since July when we would have to bring water three to four times a week while now it is down to once a week,” Iain explained.

“The situation is better but it is not rectified yet. We have a lot of cattle brought back to the yard which has put the pressure on the supply again, it wasn’t as bad over the past month when stock were spread out.

Iain continued: “We installed a mains water connection to one of the outside blocks in the past week, the connection itself was about £1,000 but there was about 1,200m of piping which had to be put down so I don’t know what the final cost will be.”

The longer-term outlook now shows a very slightly higher likelihood of wetter and warmer conditions than normal over the next three months for the UK, with an increased chance of spells of wet and stormy weather, compared to normal.

SEPA would advise any water abstractors with concerns about groundwater supplies to contact their local SEPA office to discuss possible contingency measures.