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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?

#331

Post by jaccola »

fredley wrote: post #161
KingOfCoders wrote: post #26

As a German, what amazes me, it seems like many people in England are on a water flatrate, as far as I understand it. No one (?) in Germany is.

Most water companies in the UK will not allow you to start a new flat rate tarriff though (and will definitely be applying pressure to those on a flat rate to get a meter). So if you move house chances are you will get a meter installed straight away if there isn't one already.

Water company came to my old flat, "impossible" to install a meter. My water bill halved because of their assessment.

Of course, I had lived there for 5 years, had been trying to get a visit for 1 year and hadn't changed my water usage. Still no rebate was offered!

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

#332

Post by Ajedi32 »

epolanski wrote: post #167
seanalltogether wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept of reservoirs and emergency supply seems to be completely at odds with privatisation. What private company is going to spend loads of money to build deep reservoirs that are stressed only once every 5 or 10 years. None. They're going to reach for an immediate supply like a river or aquifer and then raise prices if those sources run low. It's insane to plan out infrastructure on the belief that private com…

> It's insane to plan out infrastructure on the belief that private companies are capable of building such large buffers You can make this a requirement by law.

Or create an economic incentive for it and let the market do the rest.

I tend to favor that approach instead because it allows more room for innovation and makes it much easier to quantify exactly how much you're spending by distorting the market in that way.

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

#333

Post by alt227 »

philipallstar wrote: post #232
bjoli wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always the immigrants. Weird that they are to blame, even though water abstraction has been trending downwards for close to 30 year.

It's not always the immigrants. That comment's just as intelligent as actually believing it's always the immigrants. If the population were growing rapidly due to everyone having larger families, that would be the reason, but it's not. If you add millions of people over the last 25 years (say) then of course water will become much scarcer. And it's not like, say, food supply, which scales up and down relatively nicel…

> If you add millions of people over the last 25 years (say) then of course water will become much scarcer.

Not if the profits from selling the water are reinvested into the network to increase the capacity to fit the need.

Are you saying that its fine that billions of pounds of UK water profits money have gone into overseas investors pockets, because we shouldnt have let so many immigrants into the country and so there would still be enough water services for all if we hadn't?

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

#334

Post by kccqzy »

fredrikholm wrote: post #253
bluecheese452 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These systems were built at a time when the country was much poorer. It can afford to replace it.

Sweden's conservative government are pressuring building regulators to re-evaluate whether "all rooms require windows" in order to make the construction of apartments cheaper. "Perhaps a better plan would be to replaces cranes with horses and ropes such that we can once again afford windows" was my first thought when I read that in my turn of the century starter apartment with giant windows in every room. Like, GDP a…

That's a good thing to re-evaluate. The government shouldn't dictate people's preferences. People's lifestyles have changed. It's now normal for this generation of people to prefer a dark cave-like room where they play video games and socialize online. Glare from windows restrict where monitors could be placed. If they want natural light, they would prefer to go outside for a walk or a hike.

And that's not to mention rooms like kitchens and bathrooms. Older houses invariably have windows for kitchens too since you need to open the windows to let out the fumes from gas cooking. And they would have windows in the bathroom to let out moisture. These days newer houses are already designed not to have windows in either kitchens or bathrooms.

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

#336

Post by FromOmelas »

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 250bn figure is one pushed by the private owners, trying to defend their high yields. It's likely inflated with bonuses and short term schemes to juice returns. Meanwhile, they've extracted 85bn in dividends since privatization began. Privatizing them cost approx 7.6bn - that's a 12x return over less then 40 years. Pretty nice if you can get it.

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

#337

Post by Earw0rm »

hopelite wrote: post #207
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 abi…

I'm curious what you mean about the nature of the population?

Age? Ethnic makeup? Urbanisation?

The population is older, less white, more in cities, fewer kids, but I'm not sure what any of that has to do with our water consumption or ability to build for it - other than maybe older people, especially the ones that moved out of the cities to live some LOTR-inspired faux-rural lifestyle, tend to be more NIMBY?

But equally though our appliances and lifestyles aren't the same as 1960. Showers are massively more efficient than baths, but we use them daily instead of once a week. Industry has mostly disappeared, and thermal power stations are on the way out (both extremely heavy water users), but agriculture has become more intensive.

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

#338

Post by hermitcrab »

zarzavat wrote: post #132
tome wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm inclined to agree that privatisation is bad for long term planning, but the history of the Abingdon Reservoir proposal seems to be counter evidence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abingdon_Reservoir Looks like Thames Water (a private company) proposed the development nearly 20 years ago, but it was turned down by the Environment Agency , a government body. > Plans for a £1bn reservoir in Oxfordshire to supply more…

Good find, I admit I had jumped on the Thames Water is Evil bandwagon, and for the record they are evil, but in this case they have been out-eviled by that other driver of British societal regression: > Campaigners had fought the plan, claiming there was no need for such a large reservoir and that it would damage the environment. > Leader of the Vale of White Horse Council Tony de Vere said: "We are delighted with th…

Reservoirs are nice, aren't they? Nice to look at, swim in, kayak on, walk around etc. Unless your house is going to be flooded, of course.

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

#339

Post by walthamstow »

alt227 wrote: post #299
walthamstow wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone local would not think a number of 25m pop was referring to Greater London. South East England is a defined statistical region, using it like that could be confusing

> Anyone local would not think a number of 25m pop was referring to Greater London. Which is why we are picking you up on saying the area 'around London' has that population. I could also say that the enirety of Europe is 'around London'. Its ambiguous at best and has no real meaning.

Who is we? BouffantJoe understood perfectly fine that SE England is part of "around London"

> Its ambiguous at best and has no real meaning.

You're miles from the point, which was that much of England lives in the driest corner, which is relevant for water infra. Did you understand that from what I wrote?

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

#340

Post by declan_roberts »

CWIZO wrote: post #317

It looks like we will be forever looking for solutions when we keep on ignoring animal farming in these conversations. Not even a single mention of the orders of magnitude more of water that is required for animal agriculture vs just growing plants directly for human consumption. Would it solve everything? No. But it would solve a whole lot and the fact that someone that specialises in environmentalism doesn't even m…

I don't get it. Cattle eat grass. Grass is extraordinarily efficient at using water. It's what would normally be growing there without humans!

70% of the UK is farmland and I'm willing to bet much of that is non-irrigated pasture.

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