Water could be restricted for 16,000,000 people in UK ahead of potential drought

Water could be restricted for 16,000,000 people in UK ahead of potential drought



by Weary-Candy8252

44 comments

  1. Is there a chance that dividends might be restricted?

  2. I really doubt the public will be in the mood to help these leeches out.

  3. Problem is they just haven’t built any more reservoirs or put any real investment into the infrastructure since it was privatised in the late ’80s early ’90s.

    Since then there are a lot more houses, shops and population using the same limited amount of water. That as well as all the leaks. (I believe Thames water is one of the worst in the country for leaks), means there’s just not enough water if we get a few dry days.

    So no money for infrastructure but plenty of money for shareholders.

  4. It’s not rained here since march 4th. Honestly it is a bit worrying.

  5. If only we had competent people, running the water companies, instead of a bunch of opportunistic vultures with the morals of sewer rats!

  6. Despite the tiny amounts of rain in the past month and more the river near me that l like to paddle board on was full of actual shit yesterday from a sewage plant discharge Sunday night. I say give the bosses more money, only if they are willing to swim in the water.

  7. Haven’t built a new reservoir since 1991 but we’ve had a population increase of over 10 million people, somehow I don’t think that quite adds up!

  8. [Interactive drought map of Europe](https://drought.emergency.copernicus.eu/tumbo/edo/map/).

    Most of the UK (plus a swathe of Europe) is on drought watch or warning, this isn’t a laughing matter.

    Worst of all NIMBYs and governments stopped water companies from building new reservoirs even though they wanted to, so a new one hasn’t been built for about 30 years!

  9. Articles about hose pipe bans showing up extra early this year I see.

  11. How many desalination plants does Britain have? Or are we entirely reliant on reservoirs/ground water?

  12. It is not surprising. Here in my part of S. Essex we have only had rain on 10 days since the beginning of March. On only 5 of those days was the rain more than 1mm. In the entire month of March it only rained twice with a total of 1.3mm (average over previous 10 years was 40mm). The April total was 32.3mm, just over the averege of 29.7 mm BUT nearly all of that fell on only 3 days – there were 23 completely dry days in April. So far in May, we have had only 0.3mm and there is no rain forecast for the next 10 days. The ground is baked hard and the grass is dying off. When it finally rains, initially it will all run off pretty quickly with the risk of flooding if the rain is heavy. We need many days of sustained rainfall to help plants to grow and to replenish water stocks. If that doesn’t happen, it could be pretty grim by the end of the summer.

  13. It’s harder to think of a more damning indictment of privatisation of the water utilities. They’ve paid out £80bn since privatisation and haven’t built a single reservoir.

  14. I’m sure if they triple my bill again they’ll get round to fixing it. They just need to pay out a few more ££££££££££££££££ in dividends to be sure the shareholders are ok first.

  15. Not in Scotland kids will still have water fights in the gardens.

  16. Is this where they say ‘UK’ a lot but really mean England?

  17. If this shambles of a water company restrict the water for 16 million people….this government will fall.

  18. Everyone has forgotten we had one of the wettest summers on record last year

  19. my Thames water bill just went from £58 to £132. Absolute numpties.

  20. Fit every house with a water meter first, then we can see just how much we’re losing to leaks OUTSIDE of people’s homes.

  21. Nimbys should never complain about potential new reservoirs ever again.

  22. If only there was some massive construction project going on that could build resevoirs rather than balancing ponds. Hmm.

  23. Nice just got 47% bill increase in the post for water

  24. Lmfao, 1 month of draught and it’s like, oh god we are gonna run out! Ridiculous you’ve just had about 10 months of rain, build more reservoirs ya lazy donkeys

  25. Thames water CEO got a £160,000 bonus that he defended btw, but we might enter a drought, class

  26. What are water companies doing to prevent droughts when they aren’t pumping shit into rivers and lakes?

  27. How many months ago was it that they were pumping literal shit into the rivers because the rain was falling so hard they could not cope with it? Now we have run out of water? Total shambles, we have run out of water because they sold off all the reservoirs and gave the money away in dividends. Time to watch it go bankrupt and then nationalise it for pennies in the pound.

  28. Compulsory purchase on golf courses. If we are going to have an area dedicated to being an ecological blight, it should at least be useful to people and not just those who wear caps and tweed.

  29. It’s a good thing that privatisation didn’t lead to the mass sell off of reservoirs.

  30. Which Water Company was it that sold off 32 Reservoirs as development land?

  31. Suspend commercial extraction licences now before it becomes necessary

  32. In terms of weather we really do get it all in this country but it feels like we prepare for none of it. Sun, rain or snow it always seems to be a total surprise, somehow.

  33. Potential drought? I can’t remember the last time it rained already

  34. I sure hope those private companies have been doing the required Investments and not being given record profits to shareholders.

  35. This is the UK, give it a few more weeks, especially when Download festival is on and we’ll be talking about building arks because of all the rain.

  36. I think there are 6 reservoirs in the planning stage, they need gov help to speed them up.

    Essentially we need more in the south east that has seen a lot of the population growth and doesn’t get the rain like other areas.

    It would make sense to see if we could ‘double up’ any existing reservoirs and build new ones next to existing ones, like we do with nuclear power stations , but that may be impractical.

    Also we should look at any disused quarries and see if they could be easily converted.

    I don’t know how good we are at transferring water between areas which are running low and those that aren’t. Probably very difficult to do at scale but transferring between high and low areas is another idea.

    Maybe a desalination plant or 2 (I think there is one for London) which we could connect to a windfarm to use excess energy to help run

  37. You mean the water companies haven’t built one water reservoir for what like 50years? And now it’s put problem?

  38. And water companies refusing to invest in infrastructure strikes again. Zero reservoirs have been built whilst they syphon off profits from those built with public money

  39. I can imagine that the public won’t be keen to comply with any hosepipe bans. Why should we?

  40. Well, as long as there is enough water in our rivers to carry away all the 💩 they pump into them, we will be fine.

  41. Imagine if this heat and sunshine keeps up for like another 6 months. No rain, just sunshine. How fucked would we be?

  42. That’s ok Thames Water, we can take a hosepipe ban, at least the rivers and beaches are clean from shit after you were payed to treat all that sewage right?

  43. At the moment this is pure speculation, but we are going to have a drought if this good weather doesn’t break soon

  44. Must be one of the warmest and driest starts to the year. Meanwhile Nimby’s near me are kicking off over a potential new reservoir around here. So much shortsightedness.

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