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How can England possibly be running out of water?

theguardian.com

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Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#201

Post by jdietrich »

krona wrote: post #145
autoexec wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to things like utilities every penny of profit comes at the expense of the public. Either prices are raised so that a small number of people can stuff their pockets with extra cash above what it costs to deliver the service and maintain the system or they get that extra money by failing to deliver the service or they do it by failing to maintain the system itself. I think the neglect and failure to inve…

> I think the neglect and failure to invest in infrastructure is the worst Cumulative capital investment by water companies in England and Wales since privatisation: £250bn. The infrastructure they inherited was never designed for the things it's being asked to do today, and it has a life expectancy. It would literally cost trillions to upgrade the entire sewerage system. This isn't apologia, it's just reality. The r…

The regulator (Ofwat) also deserves a great deal of the blame. They determine the maximum prices that water companies can charge. Since the start of privatisation, they have prioritised low bills above all else and are proud of the fact that water bills fell by 45% in real terms between 1989 and 2020. The consequences are obvious - the supposed "efficiency" that pays for those lower bills inevitably means neglecting maintenance and reducing infrastructure investment. The short-term thinking that has led to this situation has been dictated by government, not shareholders.

As mentioned elsewhere in the comments, the planning system is also a huge obstacle to infrastructure investment, with numerous important projects being blocked due to spurious environmental concerns.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/687dfcc4312ee...

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#203

Post by ellen364 »

krona wrote: post #196
michaelt wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, if a water company is in good financial health, with low debt and lots of money to invest in infrastructure, it’s completely legal for private equity to buy the company, stop investing in infrastructure, take out loans until a third of customer bills go on interest payments, and take the loaned money as ‘management fees’. Then dump untreated sewerage in rivers and demand more money from bill payers, bec…

You're arguing a kind of strawman of unbridled economic liberalism which hasn't existed in England since probably the late 19th century, if at all.

Based on "a third of customer bills go on interest payments", I'd guess the original comment was about Thames Water.

In 2023 their interest payments were 28% of revenue. They also made the news for dumping particularly large volumes of sewage into rivers.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/dec/18/water-firms-us...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67357566

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#204

Post by Theodores »

1718627440 wrote: post #169
Theodores wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The research wasn't entirely hidden as they did not have a monopoly on it. In the 1980s, as a child, I remember learning at school about the greenhouse effect, or whatever we called it then. It was not difficult to understand, and neither was the 'nuclear umbrella' that we also had to contend with. In the mid 1990s I was working in TV weather. We self-censored ourselves regarding global warming, or whatever we called…

> We self-censored ourselves regarding global warming Care to elaborate what you were doing?

I looked after the IRIX boxes. I made small talk with meteorologists and presenters whilst fixing their machines.

When the adverts that go with the weather are for the likes of Land Rover or British Airways, you know the deal.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#205

Post by WillAdams »

autoexec wrote: post #64
sandbags wrote: post #34

As the article mentions, privatised water companies have built no new reservoir capacity and relied on drawing from rivers and other sources. What the article doesn’t mention is that pre-privatisation a new reservoir was built every year up to about 1960 and then every few years until privatisation in 1992. So we are about 30 years behind in adding capacity to the system. This combined with the inadequate levels of i…

When it comes to things like utilities every penny of profit comes at the expense of the public. Either prices are raised so that a small number of people can stuff their pockets with extra cash above what it costs to deliver the service and maintain the system or they get that extra money by failing to deliver the service or they do it by failing to maintain the system itself. I think the neglect and failure to inve…

Powerful argument for such to be operated as co-operatives if ownership by a non-government entity is called for.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#206

Post by foofoo12 »

walthamstow wrote: post #111

> [England] While famously rainswept I think you mean stereotypically rainswept. 25m people, >40% of England, live around London where it actually doesn't rain very much at all. > The UK is one of the rainier places in Europe Yeah, that includes Wales, Scotland and NI, where it really does rain all the bloody time.

There's this joke that in Scotland, if you can see the mountain tops then it's about to rain. If you can't then it's raining already.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#207

Post by hopelite »

sandbags wrote: post #34

As the article mentions, privatised water companies have built no new reservoir capacity and relied on drawing from rivers and other sources. What the article doesn’t mention is that pre-privatisation a new reservoir was built every year up to about 1960 and then every few years until privatisation in 1992. So we are about 30 years behind in adding capacity to the system. This combined with the inadequate levels of i…

How can we just ignore the elephant in the room; that not only has the UK population risen by almost a 1/3 since 1960, but the nature of that population has also been changed since that time, regardless of how one feels about it.

The UK (as only one example) is simply not the same thing as it was in 1960. Why would we expect the same results as if it’s just a matter of catching up from being behind, all while the ability to do so has changed?

If the UK wasn’t able to keep up with water storage capacity between 1960–1989, and has not built any capacity whatsoever since 1989; what makes one believe that somehow the UK, with massive headwinds blowing right into its face, could not only maintain the current capacity but expand it by about 50% (pop growth plus backlog), at the same time that the population has increased by ~1/3 and the nature of the people in the UK has changed significantly from a people that was able to do that in the past, but clearly could not do so since 1960, and while the finances of the country are inverting?

It is a gamblers fallacy. It is the aging man who still thinks he is in his prime, but also after decades of neglect and abuse of his body on advice of a devil on his shoulder, the serpent whispering assurances in his ear to indulge in harmful things and to win back his loses.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#208

Post by mattmanser »

krona wrote: post #145
autoexec wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to things like utilities every penny of profit comes at the expense of the public. Either prices are raised so that a small number of people can stuff their pockets with extra cash above what it costs to deliver the service and maintain the system or they get that extra money by failing to deliver the service or they do it by failing to maintain the system itself. I think the neglect and failure to inve…

> I think the neglect and failure to invest in infrastructure is the worst Cumulative capital investment by water companies in England and Wales since privatisation: £250bn. The infrastructure they inherited was never designed for the things it's being asked to do today, and it has a life expectancy. It would literally cost trillions to upgrade the entire sewerage system. This isn't apologia, it's just reality. The r…

That's according to the water companies though, you've taken those figures directly from water UK, an industry run company:

https://www.water.org.uk/about-us/our-board

We must look at the reality more critically.

We already know that the investment is open to profit extraction, the companies doing the work are owned by the same investors and there's low oversight, they have occasionally been caught using inflated prices. We don't know the extent though as OFWAT has been criticized for only really catching the really obvious ones.

All that investment is our own money, it's now apparent they've not taken on debt to pay for that investment. They claim they have, but it's now turned out that they've taken on that debt simply to pay for dividends to shareholders. Debt is around £60 billion, while share holder dividends over the years are about £80 billion (this figure varies depending on who you believe, but it's always higher than the debt). And that's without accounting for the inflated cost of "investment".

And that debt is now apparently tax-payer guaranteed because it's all to people who are too big to fail.

So they've basically made off with £20 billion in 35 years, plus however untold billions in profits from related companies in "investment", and we've got a water crisis developing, constant sewage discharge into rivers, etc.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#209

Post by lazide »

another-dave wrote: post #165
krona wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the neglect and failure to invest in infrastructure is the worst Cumulative capital investment by water companies in England and Wales since privatisation: £250bn. The infrastructure they inherited was never designed for the things it's being asked to do today, and it has a life expectancy. It would literally cost trillions to upgrade the entire sewerage system. This isn't apologia, it's just reality. The r…

I mean, all the more reason it shouldn't be privatised. If it only makes sense to have one of something (road network, water system) it's a natural monopoly, _and_ it's going to require large public investment to be maintained, why wouldn't you in-house the expertise needed to do that and avoid the shareholder dividends overhead?

Cynically, if you’re someone trying to make a lot of money, why wouldn’t you take a well run system, convince people they can save a bunch of money by ‘cutting waste’, then pocket as much money as you can by cutting long term maintenance and pocketing the difference - and when it blows up, sell them the solution at inflated prices too?

It seems like the voters actively encouraged this kind of behavior.

Eventually people figure it out (maybe) and go all fire and pitchforks - but that sounds like a problem for ‘future me’ eh?

And if you’re good at structuring everything, maybe they’ll never even have anyone concrete to blame but themselves! (Classic referendum/politician behavior there)

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#210

Post by krona »

ellen364 wrote: post #203
krona wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're arguing a kind of strawman of unbridled economic liberalism which hasn't existed in England since probably the late 19th century, if at all.

Based on "a third of customer bills go on interest payments", I'd guess the original comment was about Thames Water. In 2023 their interest payments were 28% of revenue. They also made the news for dumping particularly large volumes of sewage into rivers. https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/dec/18/water-firms-us... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67357566

> they also made the news for dumping particularly large volumes of sewage into rivers

Yes and they have been fined for doing so, thus proving my point. These companies have statutory obligations. See the Water Industry Act 1991 and subsequent legislation.

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