We face a drought this summer. This is not necessary. We could have a more than adequate water supply in the UK. There has, however, been a political choice made not to pursue that possibility. That choice is still being made, right now, with the government refusing to intervene in the water industry even though the need to do so is apparent to absolutely everyone but those working in the Treasury.
For 45 years, it has been more important to pursue profit than to meet need.
For that long, financial engineering has been more important than actual engineering.
We are now paying the price, and still our politicians have not realised that there is a need for change.
Will they ever do so, or do we need a disaster to prove the need? I really don’t know, but so powerful is the lure of money for them, it seems, I suspect a disaster is required before they even notice the issue, let alone consider how to deal with it.
This is a criticism of that LibDem bird in Abingdon who has led the 30 year fight against Thames Water being allowed to build a reservoir. Right?
The Murphy “solution” would be to print money and use it to buy all the water we need …….
We can import people much much faster than we can get approval, planning permission, and the actual build of the infrastructure to support them. Which is one significant reason why infrastructure is so strained.
Currently running at roughly 15% more people than design spec for all the shiny new projects that are due to be finished this year, and 30% above spec for all the existing stuff.
Doesn’t the current water industry financial arrangements encourage the water companies to invest in new infrastructure? I thought they got a guaranteed return on their physical assets, ergo if they build more new stuff they are guaranteed a return on that investment? Whereas if they spend money on fixing old pipes they get nothing. So new reservoirs should be something they want to build – guaranteed profits.
I’m sure that years ago I read somewhere that the biggest problems that water companies had in increasing their supply resilience was the inability to get planning permission for new reservoirs.
>This is a criticism of that LibDem bird in Abingdon
You don’t understand, she is actually a secret neoliberal!
Wreckers and kulaks!
Can’t build a reservoir (or hydro) in National Parks or National Landscapes which combined accounts for over 24% of the England land area, and almost all the wet and hilly bits.
Everywhere else is close to a settlement with NIMBYs active.
We’re fisted.
Off topic. Things seem to be getting a bit tetchy in Kashmir
And as at the 2021 census, we have in the UK 1.93 million people of Indian origin and 1.66 million of Pakistani origin.
I doubt we’ve anything to worry about, though, as I’m sure they’re all fully integrated.
And yet you can stuff them with windmills and solar farms. Philip Johnston in the DT reckons we need a Water Grid, with a canal at the 310ft contour running down the spine of the country. He’s not wrong.
https://archive.ph/3sioX
‘That choice is still being made, right now, with the government refusing to intervene in the water industry’
“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”
Spud’s passive construct is goofy. Doing nothing isn’t really a choice if you didn’t choose it. You can do nothing without actually choosing it.
@Norman
…we need a Water Grid, with a canal at the 310ft contour running down the spine of the country.
If California can do it, so can you. Oh, I forgot, that all was done before Democrats took over the state.
You’re screwed.
Bongo
The Derwent Valley Reservoirs near Sheffield were constructed in the 1930s. In 1951, the Peak District National Park was created with the reservoirs as part of the Park. When, a few years ago, Severn Trent applied for permission to expand the reservoirs, the usual suspects frustrated the plan by bleating about the loss of ancient forest….Ancient forest has value but so much as a secure water supply.
– provide a guaranteed rate of return for running the existing infrastructure
– restrict the rate of return on any new infrastructure
– slow walk permits for that new stuff
– complain about the guaranteed rate of return; there shouldn’t be one
– allow in literally millions of immigrants who will want more water.
Wonder why there’s no new infrastructure to supply the existing people, let alone the new ones.
Underpants gnomes are models of logic compared to this reasoning.
“– allow in literally millions of immigrants who will want more water.”
This. And even then, I read last year that domestic only represents 10-15% of water consumption, so those hosepipe bans are essentially performative.
Where does the rest go? I daresay agriculture takes a lot. The Spine Canal would solve the problem: there’s no shortage of water in the North and West. Perhaps they could flood the HS2 track?
In before western Europe gets the wettest Summer in recorded history this year…
Ha – now that’s not a water grid. THIS is a water grid!
“the sheer arrogance and imperial ambitions of the modern hydraulic West”
It’s a great phrase, that. And all so as to be able to grow more almonds and avocados in California. Oh, and water the vast population explosion in what were then sparsely-populated Western desert states. They need that water now.
A canal (at a constant elevation) doesn’t cut it, as the damn thing needs a slope if it is going to deliver more than the odd bucket or two.
Don’t people do hydraulics any more?
There isn’t any ancient forest around the Derwent reservoirs, it was all planted as part of the waterworks in the 1930s.
I suppose “90 years ago” is ancient for many modern people.
A canal (at a constant elevation) doesn’t cut it, as the damn thing needs a slope if it is going to deliver more than the odd bucket or two.
Don’t people do hydraulics any more?
I had assumed there would be pumps at various points? I don’t think just tipping all the water from the north onto London would be a very good idea. Though come to think about it…
Philip Johnston in the DT reckons we need a Water Grid, with a canal at the 310ft contour running down the spine of the country. He’s not wrong.
And it could have been built with the spare change from HS2.
@Excavator Man
I believe the concept from the 1950’s was for it to be level. The trick is that it’s 17 feet deep with 25 foot of headroom meaning that it has a potential difference of up to 42 foot to get water from one end to the other. Being 100 foot wide it’s as much a very long water storage reservoir as a water transport system.
This is the problem in the US. The Mississippi River, which has way more water than needed to meet downriver Riparian Rights, is at 380 feet elevation at St Louis. To pipe it out to the desert southwest, it has to cross the Rockies at over 10,000 feet.
I know it’s unfashionable and crazily disruptive but could we not solve the imminent drought and subsequent desertification being delivered by Climate Change (TM) by simply stopping all the leaks across the water systems?
There is deffo a hole in our bucket, pouring more water in by building reservoirs will not solve it
Could do, could do.
Which costs more/less? Putting more water into the pipes or reducing leakage from the pipes? We should – I assume you’re with me on this – do whichever solves the problem at the least cost?
The water industry was privatised in 1989 – 35 years ago, not 45 years ago. Spud really is an innumerate halfwit.
Privatisation of anything – let alone water – was not mentioned in the Conservative manifesto ten years prior to that.
@ Gamecock
If you can find a foolproof way of preventing future leaks at different places ….
Tim,
“Which costs more/less? Putting more water into the pipes or reducing leakage from the pipes? We should – I assume you’re with me on this – do whichever solves the problem at the least cost?”
The thing no-one talks about when they talk about Thames Water being worst for leaks is that it has London. And London has a lot of old Victorian houses, Victorian pipes, it’s highly concentrated, pipes running underground, between the basements of houses, all manner of things. And they emerge. Someone notices their basement is damp or see water coming in and call. Leaks aren’t known. There isn’t a map of them with a plan. It’s a legacy of a 100+ year old setup that was all hacked together at the time.
Newer housing built later had mains built along roads, then into houses. Leaks are easy to see, fix. Better pipe technology, better tracking.
It’s not a bad idea to fix the old pipes, but it makes sense to built reservoirs while doing it.