“We are working hard to maintain river levels for people, wildlife, navigation and agriculture,” says Thomas Enright, the Environment Agency’s environment manager for Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire. That promise is now being tested across North Lincolnshire, where the Trent Witham Ancholme River Transfer Scheme has been switched on to help keep supplies steady during prolonged dry weather. If needed, the system can move the equivalent of 60 Olympic-sized swimming pools of water a day, the sort of public infrastructure most people barely think about until a dry summer starts to bite.

Owned and operated by the Environment Agency since 1974, the scheme is one of those workhorse bits of regional engineering that quietly underpins daily life across Lincolnshire. It supports more than 100 abstraction licences used by water companies, farmers, industrial users and other licensed abstractors drawing from the Rivers Ancholme and Witham. For this part of the country, that matters well beyond the technical language. Reliable water levels affect farming, food production, local industry, river traffic and the wider health of the county’s waterways.

When levels on the River Ancholme fall below what is needed to keep navigation going and support licensed abstraction, water is pumped from the River Witham at Short Ferry. From there, it travels through a 17.5-kilometre pipeline into the upper Ancholme. If the Witham is also running low, the system reaches further back. Water is pumped from the River Trent at Torksey, sent along the Fossdyke Canal and fed into the Witham at Lincoln, allowing the county to move water across three major waterways before local pressure becomes a wider problem.

Another line of defence sits at Toft Newton Reservoir. The 16.5-hectare reservoir can store up to 761,000 cubic metres of water and acts as an emergency reserve if pollution incidents or equipment failures interrupt the usual river transfers. That gives the Environment Agency a safety net at moments when the margin for error becomes thin. In a dry spell, having stored water ready to release into the Ancholme can make the difference between careful management and a far messier response.

The strain is already showing in places. The Environment Agency says fish rescue operations have been carried out on the River Slea and at a Lincoln & District Angling Association stillwater, with further sites being watched closely. The wider picture is not limited to one river system. The agency has also supported fish rescue work on Billing Brook, a tributary of the lower River Nene, and is responding to rising salinity levels on the Hob Hole and Lower Steeping River, signs that dry weather can push pressure through several parts of the region at once.

Residents may also have noticed more duckweed on Lincolnshire rivers, especially on the Witham. The agency says prolonged dry weather and slower flows often create the conditions for that build-up, which can quickly change the look of local waterways. People who spot fish in distress are being urged to report it to the Environment Agency incident hotline on 0800 80 70 60. In conditions like these, early calls from people on the bank can be just as important as formal monitoring.

Alongside the emergency response, the agency says it is working with farmers, growers and water companies to encourage more sustainable water use during the dry weather. That includes temporary limits on abstraction licences where needed and support for water transfers between abstractors. The Environment Agency also says water companies must have robust drought plans in place, although any decision on a hosepipe ban remains with the companies themselves. It is backing the Let’s Save Water efficiency campaign and continues to work with Defra through the National Drought Group, but the local message in Lincolnshire is plain enough: this is a dry-weather test of whether long-standing regional infrastructure can keep homes, business and wildlife protected at the same time.