Water Shortage?

[CHJ]

A visit to 'Trev the Turners' Country and beyond last Thursday to check out the rumours of a water shortage.

 

[RogerS]

Ah..those pictures bring back memories.

Travelling around parts of West London recently I was staggered to see how many front gardens had been tarmacced over for car parking...around 90% down one street that I walked. So any rain just goes down the sewers and into the sea.

I can understand why people feel the need to do this as many of the houses (Edwardian and Victorian) were built when cars were very thin on the ground and so there was no need to plan for car parking. But even so, makes you think.

 

[Neomorph]

My sister lives in Aylesbury and she was telling me of three reservoirs that got filled in and housing estates built on. Now to me that's a double failure for the water suppliers. First the reduction due to the lack of reservoirs and then secondly due to more water needed for the new housing estates.

Then to top it off they say they are short of water and you can't use the water you have paid for? Bloody outrageous imho.

 

[RogerS]

That was also mentioned in todays paper...selling off reservoirs in the SE. Nothing to do with shareholder dividends, I suppose?

Also, despite the hosepipe ban, you can still fill your swimming pool but not, of course, water your garden..which would be more environmentally friendly.

 

[Neomorph]

Yeah that's another thing my sister mentioned. In her opinion all the utilities should be nationalised because at present it's prioritised towards shareholder profits. Another thing her water authority is poor on is fixing leaks. They lose more water from leaks than they do from people using hosepipes. They apparently can't afford to fix them.

:evil:

I'm lucky... I live in the midlands and can't remember when the last hosepipe ban was in force here.

 

[NeilO]

neomorph wrote "In her opinion all the utilities should be nationalised because at present it's prioritised towards shareholder profits."

it seems to me Any service, that was once nationalised , and now turned private seems to be run at the expense of the customer(ie poor service , poor quality etc) in order to maximise the profit margins to satisfy to shareholders, As a bus driver for a national company (yes, someone has to do it..and yes we drivers take a lot of flak, from disgruntled customers about this) but when this service was nationalised, the service was the priority, and profit took a backseat.
Nowadays its all about profit , just to keep the shareholders happy, 20+ year old vehicles on the road, and you can imagine the state of them 100+miles a day, 7 days a week ... a poor repair system, because it costs money, and they (shareholders ) dont care if the bus doesnt run , theyre not waiting at a bus stop in the pissing rain to get home...
i could rant all day, but i think you get my drift.
Sorry if this is off topic .....but just my tuppence worth.

Utilities= if it serves the nation it should be nationalised.

 

[CHJ]

It certainly makes me angry to see it wasted, why we do not have a national water grid like we have for gas defeats me. If someone would put their hands in their pockets and help fund the Canal Restoration project Just Starting in our valley for instance then some if not all of that surplus water coming over those dams could be salvaged and pumped into the Thames.
I believe that Swindon's consumption alone could cover the cost of the pumping requirements rather than deplete the water tables in Wiltshire.

Edit: Please be careful and not get too political in this thread.

Although being an ex Civil Servant I have seen waste occur in a national organization, I do think it is a small price to pay for the overall benefit of the nation where Quality and Ideal service come before absolute book balancing, I have never experienced any more waste than the 3 vehicles and 7 men it took to replace a storm cover on the electric pole in our village this winter.

 

[Taffy Turner]

Water shortage?????

What's one of them then? I am just completing the second deck on my Ark project!!!

Here in South Wales we suffer from regular sunshine shortages, but as far as I can recall, we haven't had a water shortage since 1976. I suppose that is what comes from having enormous rainfall and a conveniently crinkled landscape to store it in!

Perhaps we should have a national sunshine grid - a couple of huge mirrors in the dry parts of the UK that could be adjusted to beam their rays down our way!!!!

A soggy Taffy. :roll:

 

[LyNx]

We are in "hosepipe ban" as from today.

Funny thing is, there is a large water leek at the start of the estate, and i can still fill a 3000 gallon pond up as this is not within the water ban.

Who makes these rules up


ahh, and i forgot, it's been 3.5 weeks since i ordered my water butt (again from Thames Water) and still not sign of it. 28 days delivery, do we still live in the times of 28 days delivery :twisted: :evil: :twisted:

Andy

 

[orangetlh]

so technically, could you fill a tank or pond or swimming pool with water, and then pump it out to wash your car or water the garden?

 

[Scrums]

Is that the Elan Valley ?

Up here in the Northwest, as S.Wales - we suffer sunshine shortage rather then water shortage.

But having moved up from a Southern Water area some 3 years ago (Bracknell) I'll settle for the showers and preserve my garden.

Chris.

 

[CHJ]

Is that the Elan Valley ?
...snip...Chris.

Yes, and the falls ("Break-its-neck"? Rhaeadr?), picnic site and forest walks are just off the A44 near there.

 

[Neomorph]

I just had an idea... continue to use the hosepipe and when the water company tries to sue you just answer "I'm using the water from the 7 reservoirs that you filled in and sold off. Oh yeah... no water in them now is there... Oh well, just pay the fine out of the management profits from the sale of them."

It's all about profits for shareholders than supply to the customers.

 

[Richard in Smithville]

I have been following this thread with some interest. I have been talking with my cousin about water restrictions in the UK(he lives in Eynsford). As he puts it, considering that the UK is an island, there must be some technology that will eliminate the need for restrictions.

Here in Canada, we are home the the largest supply of fresh water in the world. In fact, where I live there is a great lake about 20 minutes to the north and also one to the south about the same distance. We used to run the town on well water until it was found that test wells contained pcb's(I stopped glowing a while ago).Now we have our water pumped from Lake Ontario. They put in a brand new pump station to serve three area towns that was over worked the day it came on line. And you guessed it, I have restrictions each summer. The scary thing is that even though the pump station is running above 100%, new houses still continue to go up in all three towns.

Ok. The silly Canadian is done now.

 

[Neomorph]

It may sound crazy but with these restrictions getting more and more that we could see population restrictions in certain areas (or we should at least) to reduce over-demand in areas like our south-east. With the internet we could move a lot of the work to other areas of the country that are not facing water restrictions.

But what is happening... the total opposite. More and more houses are going up, reservoirs are being filled in and more houses built onto them and it's all going to come crashing down on them.

Do you know what is even sillier? The BBC have a chart of reservoir capacities and it's showing that Thames Water have their reservoir capacity at 96% yet they have imposed a hosepipe ban. That says to me they don't have the capacity in their reservoirs to supply demand... and this is a water authority that has be FILLING IN RESERVOIRS AND SELLING THE LAND OFF!!!

Does my head in!

 

[Alf]

Putting aside leakage, lost reservoirs and so forth, to be fair to Thames they're trying to think ahead a bit. Yes, they have the water now, but what outcry would there be if people were reduced to using bowsers by July because Thames had failed to instigate a hose pipe ban in April?

It does seem a shame we don't have some kind of water grid going though; the baby reservoir near us has a lot of water going over the top of the dam at the moment, with nowhere to store it but Falmouth Bay. :roll: Mind you the potential for loss to leaks would be enormous...

Cheers, Alf

 

[Neomorph]

Putting aside leakage, lost reservoirs and so forth, to be fair to Thames they're trying to think ahead a bit. Yes, they have the water now, but what outcry would there be if people were reduced to using bowsers by July because Thames had failed to instigate a hose pipe ban in April?

What I was saying is that if they are asking for a hosepipe ban now shows that they do not have adequate reservoir capacity if their current capacity is at 96% and they are still panicking that it isn't enough.

It does seem a shame we don't have some kind of water grid going though; the baby reservoir near us has a lot of water going over the top of the dam at the moment, with nowhere to store it but Falmouth Bay. :roll: Mind you the potential for loss to leaks would be enormous...

Cheers, Alf

You can see here as to why it apparently isn't worth it. I personally think the water authorities are saying "It's just not profitable to our shareholders and as we are short of water we can raise the water bills to compensate!". :roll:

 

[Adam]

I know someone who worked at Yorkshire water. A few years back he told me a story.....

The way they move water between local reservoirs is to to pump (or release if its upstream/downstream) the water into a local river, and pump it back out into the reservoir that needs it - so using the river as a channel to move the water.

This situation had arisen, and they were merrily pumping the water out of one of their reservoirs as quickly as they could, only, several months later, someone noticed they'd forgotten to put the pumps in downstream - and had just been pouring the water out to sea :roll:

Adam

 

[Alf]

Putting aside leakage, lost reservoirs and so forth, to be fair to Thames they're trying to think ahead a bit. Yes, they have the water now, but what outcry would there be if people were reduced to using bowsers by July because Thames had failed to instigate a hose pipe ban in April?

What I was saying is that if they are asking for a hosepipe ban now shows that they do not have adequate reservoir capacity if their current capacity is at 96% and they are still panicking that it isn't enough.

Yeah, I got that, but I was putting aside the reservoirs.

Cheers, Alf

 

[Neomorph]

(snip)
This situation had arisen, and they were merrily pumping the water out of one of their reservoirs as quickly as they could, only, several months later, someone noticed they'd forgotten to put the pumps in downstream - and had just been pouring the water out to sea :roll:

Adam

Classic!