The desalination process requires water at high pressure. From http://www.oas.org/DSD/publications/Unit/oea59e/ch... and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_osmosis#High_... it seems to be a minimum of ~250psi.

The capacity of the Thames desalination plant is quoted at 150 million litres per day.

150 Ml/d at a pressure of 250psi will consume around 2 megawatts. Running that all day everyday will cost an additional £1m assuming 6p per kWh.

Mostly the problem with moving vast amounts of water is the pumping costs, obvious I know but 1000 litres weighs a tonne (give or take) and the further you have to push it the more it costs. With regard to the quality issue it's mostly the low demand times that cause the problems, good water quality depends on turning the water over regularly within the pipe so the times when the water wasn't required would necessitate flushing the pipes through regularly which would be a massive waste and high cost for nothing.

All of these things can be overcome but while people are unwilling to pay more for water and OFWAT support that view (as they should imo) there will be limited success with any of these plans due to cost.

Sorry, but the water companies should be forced into providing an adequate supply system from some of their profits. How anybody is allowed to make money from something so vital to life as water is just immoral.

Ok, granted they are loosing money from metered customers, but i am not on a meter. So i am paying the same, and using far less. They are making a £ saving on me.

I find it amazing that the Romans had running water throughout Italy (as it was then) 2,000 years ago and we can't figure it out now. They used water from areas of heavier rain and transported it to areas of little of no rain without electricity, genius.

They even had fresh running water in some of the North African part of their empire which is sub-saharan.

Sounds like the engineers of Rome were a lot more forward thinking than the water companies now.

Not quite true. Everything built since 1991 in the UK is on a meter.

How much extra would you be prepared to pay on your bill for building extra reservoirs?

I'd say it's a reasonable percentage actually. The rate at which new houses have gone up where I live is quite staggering.

To use a cliche, "I remember when all this was just fields"

The NIBYS in our area petitioned not to have a new reservoirs built. I was for it - good for jobs, good for new activities, pleasent to look at. But no.

From the Walker Review,around a third of households in England and around a quarter in Wales, in 2008/9, paid for their water and sewerage on the basis of water meters.

Some areas had over 60% of properties metered; the lowest %age of metered properties in an area was just 12%. The numbers are, of course, increasing all the time, as people also choose to have water meters fitted to their pre-1991 properties.