Life of a Chalkstream: The drought of '76 vs. '22 . Why it is worse this time around

Greetings!

My most vivid memory of the drought of 1976 has nothing to do with rivers but mostly to do with setting a field on fire on our family farm.

My own bloody fault – I was determined to have a bonfire to burn up the detritus from a fallen tree. I watched in horror as flames spread across the field through the grass like red hot larva down the side of a volcano. Fortunately, by the time I managed to string together every hose in the farmyard, it had burnt itself out without too much collateral damage except perhaps to my ears as I was, how shall I say this politely, verbally admonished by my father.

But back to the present. As far as the current drought is concerned in respect of the chalkstreams it is hard to give a direct line of comparison between ’76 and ’22 – there really isn’t enough accurate data to compare river flows and much of what people will tell you is anecdotal or, frankly, ill informed. I’ve seen pictures of dried-up rivers which are winterbournes, namely rivers that only flow in the winter and spring even in the wettest of years.

A mile from the source of the Itchen. Not a winterbourne!

The fact is you must treat some of the hysteria for what it is – headline grabbing by the media and special interest groups. So, in an attempt to bring some reason here are the headlines to what I consider the major issue of the day, namely the mismatch of water demand and supply. Let us start with population.

Currently the population of the UK is 67.5m compared with 56.2m in 1976 – that is an increase of 11.3m people or 20.1%. In the same period our level of water consumption has risen by 80%. Back then the average household water usage per person per day was 84 litres; today it stands at 152 litres. So, if you do the maths though our population has only (sic) increased by 20.1% the demand has increased by 117%.

Now, we might bitch and scream about how much water we are using but it’s a simple fact of life that for the foreseeable future our homes and lifestyles have radically changed. In truth, we are well down the league table in terms of water use, even compared to our European neighbours e.g. France at 290 litres and nowhere near the USA at 575 litres and Australia at 460 litres who stand at one and two in the international table.

We obviously all know in ’22 that our water supply industry is in private hands, so I’ll take a slight side-track to fill you in on who owned what in ’76. At this point we were meant to be on the cusp of a new era of water management with the 1973 Water Act establishing 10 publicly owned regional water authorities for England and Wales that replaced some 170 private and municipal water providers. The plan was for the newly formed regional water authorities to manage water resources and the supply of water on a fully integrated basis operating investment on a cost recovery basis. It was generally accepted that massive spending was required for a nation still largely reliant on Victorian infrastructure.

Did this happen? Well, not really. There was a slight burst of reservoir building but on the whole governments of all stripes shied away from the concept of cost recovery for the new infrastructure required as that entailed sharply increasing consumer water bills. Just as an aside most large commercial water users have private water sources. By the mid-1980’s it was clear that the hoped for investment was not happening so privatisation offered a handy way of offloading future responsibilities from the public to the private sector.

In broad terms we obtain our water from two sources: reservoirs and aquifers. As I’ve written before, for most months of the year, even in a drought year, supply is not a problem as Mother Nature supplies our needs. British rainfall is astonishingly reliable; average rainfall has barely moved over the past three centuries with records going back to the 1700’s.

However, in the summer, and especially in dry years, how much water we have in storage and the ability to shift it around the country, as we do with the electricity grid, with back up from alternate sources such as desalination, becomes hugely important. So, how much of this has happened?

Starting with the last first. Despite this being proposed as a solution in the wake of the ’76 drought only one desalination plant has been built which, if my memory serves me correctly, was to provide water to 300,000 homes in east London. Incredibly it is currently out of commission! The one other that came close to being built was in Hampshire but was cancelled by the new owners of Southern Water last year.

In regard to reservoirs not a single new one has been opened since privatisation in 1989 and in fact, many smaller ones have been sold off by the private water companies largely for housing development. So just let’s think about that: they increase demand for their product whilst at the same time reducing supply. Well done Ofwat. Did you ever spot that? But on a wider national scale of the 47 larger reservoirs of England and Wales, the first in 1888, only six were opened after 1976 that increased storage capacity by 23%. As for a ‘national grid’ of water that is still being talked about with just a few localised schemes in place.

So, ask the question: if your demand has increased by 117% but your supply by 23% where do you get your water from Mr/Mrs Water Company person? From the aquifers of course! And for those of us in the chalkstreams regions we are doubly screwed for there are rarely any reservoirs that serve our regions and certainly no national water grid or desalination plants to help us in our time of greatest need.

The fact is that we are much worse off this time around for the simple fact that we are taking more water from beneath the ground, especially in the chalkstream regions where the fragile headwaters and smaller streams are literally having the life sucked out of them.

And let us not let government, the water companies or the regulators that oversee the water industry use weasel words to shift the blame to climate change. This crisis has been a long time in the making and is squarely on their combined shoulders.

Roadford - the last reservoir opened since 1989. We just need another twenty......

That was the month that was July

On Wednesday I had a meeting with a team from Natural England and the Environment Agency on the River Itchen downstream of Winchester.

Now this is not to belittle the magnitude of the current drought but standing by the river you could see all our collective brain cogs whirring – the river looked great! It is an astounding tribute to the geology of the chalkstreams that, despite all that is thrown at them they can still survive.

In truth the middle and lower parts of the bigger chalkstreams such as the Test, Itchen and Avon will get through this period relatively unscathed. The real problems lie with the headwaters of all chalkstreams, including those I mention and smaller chalkstreams everywhere where the drought, combined with massive over abstraction, is crippling.

As to fishing in July, the secret of success was adapting your expectations and tactics to the conditions. It can be tough. Fish do get picky. We are not conditioned to standing outside all day in heat and sun. But then again, a fish has to eat. So, once you got your head around the situation in front of you there were plenty of great reports especially, and as I inferred above, with the wider and bigger sections are fishing as well as ever.

Well done to Tom Daukes who fished Kanara on the River Itchen in the first week of July winning the monthly Fishing Breaks snood, which is great for keeping you safe from the sun! Everyone else is back in the draw for the end-of-season Hardy reel draw.