Drought - what drought?

Photo source: Southern Water Peacehaven WWTW

Despite the current rain, we are going to be short of water this summer as underground water levels remain at record lows. Despite appearances England is not a wet country, we get less rain per head than Sudan. Yes annual rainfall is much higher but not when our high population density is taken into account.

There is not a simple answer. Water is far too cheap and heavy to justify long distance trunk mains from say Scotland or the River Severn. But it is certain more must be done. The obvious place to start is demand – why in Britain do only a third of homes have meters when all our industrial competitors (except Ireland) all have meters? Houses that have meters use on average 15% less water. 

Why do we still accept 25% leakage almost the same as 25 years ago? Leakage at Thames Water is over 25% while in Paris and New York it is 10% and Singapore only 5%.

We also need to get better at sharing water locally. The driest county Kent has six water companies. The Environment Agency has suggested that the water companies could save half a billion pounds by installing a few linking pipes between their systems. Forget a national grid, install a Kent grid instead.

Water companies want to saddle customers with very expensive new reservoirs. Yet our track record of building reservoirs in the right place is not good, just look at Kelder, its water remains under used. We need to move away from the unhelpful bias in the regulatory system towards capital cost schemes rather than reducing operating costs. This needs leadership at Ministerial level with a real willingness to accept that water problems, drought or floods will only get worse and decisive action is needed.