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Water shortages and hosepipe bans

Another hose pipe ban has just been announced in the South East of England (click here for details).  The water supply companies are supposed to ensure that such bans do not occur more often than once in 10 years.  These bans happen quite frequently and are even accompanied by drought orders:

The water supply situation is going from bad to worse:
We are now in the position where not only is the South East of England suffering from unsustainable and unacceptable abstraction regimes but, in the summer, the rest of the country has very little available water.

 Some parts of the South East, such as the downland in East Hampshire/West Sussex get plentiful rainfall but there are other areas such as north Kent and areas to the north of London that have very little rainfall indeed.  Overall there is insufficient water in the region to provide for the population without desalination or importing water from elsewhere (although "elsewhere" is also short of water).  Thames Water is already opting for direct extraction from sea water (desalination) .  This gamble depends upon reasonably low energy prices (Current methods require about 14 kilowatt-hours of energy to produce 1,000 gallons of desalinated seawater).  AT 100 gallons per person per day this is about 10kW hours per head, around £300 a year at current energy prices.
 
Almost 60% of water use in England and Wales is domestic consumption:

"The total amount abstracted by the water companies for public water supply
in England and Wales in 2002/3 was 15400 Ml/d2 : 56% of this was supplied to
households, 25% was supplied to industrial, commercial and agricultural customers, and 18% was lost as leakage through the distribution network (Ofwat, 2003a: another 6% of the total abstracted was lost by leakage from customers’ pipes)." (Arnell and Delaney 2006).

So the stress on the water supply is due to the increasing population.  The government has increased the population of the South East without taking any account of resources.  As Christine Drury, Chair of the CPRE (South East) points out, the Government "ignored water supply totally in its Sustainable Communities Plan" and "must take greater account of environmental limits
on water supply in current circumstances, and not just assume the water companies can be bound by their mandate to provide."

I wonder if the government excluded water from its "Sustainable Communities Plan" precisely because it makes development unsustainable. The Government policy of increasing the population of England by 20% (and the SE by about 30%) over the next 20 years is extremely risky if water availability is taken into account.

The population of England is being deliberately increased by the Government to levels that are dangerous and may threaten the survival of our children.  What is utterly remarkable is that Sussex is disappearing under a covering of houses and tarmac yet the people in that county seem quite happy to accept that in 20 or 40 years time they will be living in nearly perpetual drought conditions, at least until the food supply fails - they will not be living at all after that.  I am not joking, you cannot just fill a country endlessly with people without a day of reckoning.

What I cannot understand is why the government is filling the country with people when this takes away land from wildlife, decreases the amenity of the country for everyone and puts our children's lives at risk.  Do you know why?

See also:

The predicted population of Britain


Arnell, N.W. and Delaney, K. (2006). ADAPTING TO CLIMATE CHANGE: PUBLIC WATER SUPPLY IN ENGLAND AND WALES. Climatic Change (2006) DOI: 10.1007/s10584-006-9067-9 Springer http://www.waterandclimateinformationcentre.org/resources/8022007_Arnell2006_ClCh.pdf


Warren, G. (2007) A CPRE South East report: A Water Resource Strategy for the South East of England. SBN 1 902786 90 4  http://www.cprese.org.uk/campaigns/water/water_strategy_for_the_southeast.pdf
July 2007

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