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.
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