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Sewage and waste management aside (I know that is a big
aside) the water industry in Britain does a good job of providing reliable,
cheap, clean water to homes and businesses. Can you think of the last time
your taps ran dry or your water was declared unsafe? As a percentage of
total delivery, the failures are vanishingly small. And as for cost my
metered water bill this year will be less than my TV licence and for most
households the amount spent on water will be in the bottom quartile of the
household bill totem. In that lies part of the problem.
Since privatisation in 1989 the regulator OFWAT has exerted
downward pressure on water bills. Water is seen as a social need so, as
such, needs to be as cheap as possible buying in to the naïve argument that
since rain falls for free from the heavens it should equally work its way
to our taps as close to free as possible. This, of course, ignores the vast
infrastructure required to supply 28 million homes plus millions of
businesses. And most of that infrastructure predates privatisation – take
for instance reservoirs.
Heading west on the A30 through Devon you will see the brown
tourist signs for Roadford Reservoir, the last reservoir built in Britain.
Astonishingly it opened 33 years ago. I say astonishingly because in those
33 years the UK population has risen by 11 million. That is a 20% increase
in demand for water (we use a bit less per household/year than we did in
the 1980’s but the number of households has increased with the atomisation
of families) with no consequent increase in supply bar one single
desalination plant opened in Beckton, east London in 2010. If you have by
now done the math, you will have worked out that Roadford Reservoir opened
in 1989; it was the product of a nationalised water industry when there was
the political will to force through difficult planning decisions and add
the construction cost to bills.
Of course, you are only able to store water if you have it,
so the EA have extensively modelled rainfall in England and Wales for the
next 50 years. Their conclusions? Well, the total rainfall is not going to
change much, maybe a few percentage points either side of historical norms.
It’s a fairly anodyne conclusion; hardly a Greta Thunberg prediction
of water apocalypse. At worst the EA predict slightly drier winters and
slightly wetter summers which, if accurate, will actually help water
provision. And anyway, regardless of modelling, we probably use less than a
quarter of all rainfall for our water needs.
For here is the truth about water supply. For 8-9 months of
the year there is more water than anyone can possibly need. Reservoirs are
full to brimming. Rivers flow mightily. Groundwater supplies, even in the
sensitive chalkstream regions, can give up what people need without harm.
But in those critical months, broadly July-October, the natural capital of
water can run dry. This is when we need reservoirs and desalination plants,
but as with the energy industry, three decades of complacency, pencil
sharpening and an unwillingness to plan for the future has left the UK
vulnerable at the moments of need.
Which is a shame. Reservoirs are not only reliable and
relatively inexpensive, but they soon become integral to the landscape. Can
anyone imagine Northumberland today without Kielder or the east Midlands
without Rutland Water? These two were part of the great reservoir building
boom of 1950-79 when 29 of the current 47 reservoirs in England and Wales
were built. We should be doing this again. The tiny Portsmouth Water
Company, who control an area newly classified by the CWC as under ‘serious
water stress’ is the only water firm in the British Isles with an agreed
plan to build a new reservoir, the Havant Thicket reservoir in east
Hampshire, at a cost of £120 million to supply 160,000 people. Taking that
as a guide, and assuming we want to fill the population/storage gap left
during the first 30 years of privatisation, building enough new reservoir
capacity nationwide will cost £8.5 billion.
That doesn’t sound a lot of money for an infrastructure
project that will give us water security, whilst protecting rivers and
wetlands from over abstraction for generations to come. That is because it
isn’t. Assuming the full cost devolves to domestic bill payers that is just
an extra £15 per person per year with the construction cost is spread over
20 years. Or put in the argot the Government seems to prefer, a ‘green
levy’ of 9% on bills.
I don’t know about you, but that sounds to me like a pretty
good trade.
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