Water shortage in Kent -is this a precedent?

[lornemalvo]

The water shortage in Kent is truly shocking, in my view. It has been sated as being due to "high demand". Has this happened before, other than during drought conditions? Should we start to consider the possibility that we are over populated?

[steveo3002]

nah keep building more and more houses , what could happen

[AbbeyNormal]

I blame Reform Limited.

[alangla]

Wonder what the daily leakage is for that water company

[skyebear]

I was in the car earlier and LBC we're talking about this - Southern Water? Seven days without water which is atrocious. Think they said the useless CEO had resigned but no firm date when service would be restored!

[hyperblue]

Living next door in East Sussex, this is getting more concerning. We had seemingly endless rain through winter and spring plus mild weather through early May. Our hosepipe ban from last summer was only lifted in February!

We’ve had maybe a week of hot weather and south east water is already threatening restrictions, blaming high consumption. No st Sherlock. Nothing to do with the water pissing out of leaks, lack of infrastructure investment, inadequate reservoir capacity, incompetent leadership etc

I’m sure throwing up endless housing estates has nothing to do with it either.

[John D.]

Let's build a few more resorvoirs and fix the leaks.

[FourWheelDrift]

Only a week of heatwave and shortages already, leaks or have they built an AI data centre in Kent that's hoovering up all the water.

[Speed Badger]

Down here we literally had a hosepipe ban for about 6 months from South East water, so god knows what they've been doing with it all. Probably hosing down their new Bentleys. And elephants.

[Randy Winkman]

hyperblue said:

Living next door in East Sussex, this is getting more concerning. We had seemingly endless rain through winter and spring plus mild weather through early May. Our hosepipe ban from last summer was only lifted in February!

We ve had maybe a week of hot weather and south east water is already threatening restrictions, blaming high consumption. No st Sherlock. Nothing to do with the water pissing out of leaks, lack of infrastructure investment, inadequate reservoir capacity, incompetent leadership etc

I m sure throwing up endless housing estates has nothing to do with it either.

In Kent, after the really dry spring and summer last year the weather more or less switched overnight to rain, day after day after day. All through the second part of autumn last year, right through winter and until a month or so ago. As wet a winter as I can remember and I'm 61.

[Wills2]

We're woefully underinvested when it comes to this stuff, for a country with the annual rainfall we get this shouldn't be happening but we build nothing and invest fractions of what is needed.

I live in Yorkshire and we have massive catchment areas and lots of rain but a few weeks of dry weather is enough to drain the reservoirs, Yorkshire water is the 2nd largest land owner in the country and builds nothing adds no resilience and can't even keep the rivers clean.

Things are changing climate wise (let's not argue why) and we're criminally underprepared in all areas.

[oyster]

Randy Winkman said:

hyperblue said:

Living next door in East Sussex, this is getting more concerning. We had seemingly endless rain through winter and spring plus mild weather through early May. Our hosepipe ban from last summer was only lifted in February!

We ve had maybe a week of hot weather and south east water is already threatening restrictions, blaming high consumption. No st Sherlock. Nothing to do with the water pissing out of leaks, lack of infrastructure investment, inadequate reservoir capacity, incompetent leadership etc

I m sure throwing up endless housing estates has nothing to do with it either.

In Kent, after the really dry spring and summer last year the weather more or less switched overnight to rain, day after day after day. All through the second part of autumn last year, right through winter and until a month or so ago. As wet a winter as I can remember and I'm 61.

Don’t know which part of Kent you’re in, but in West Kent we’ve had an unbelievably dry spring. An agronomist fried of mine was saying between mid-Feb and mid-May we’ve had 2 weeks worth of rain in 3 months (and that was before the current heatwave).

I was in Chislehurst last week, the duck pond was just damp mud, never seen that in May before.

[paulw123]

Why spend money on maintaining or improving your infrastructure when you can just dish it out to the shareholders instead?

If you have a hosepipe ban your bill should be reduced as you're not getting the service you should be.

Edited by paulw123 on Friday 29th May 22:57

[tele_lover]

And those clowns in the other thread said 6.4 million additional people, no problem.

[Timothy Bucktu]

Building houses makes money. Building necessary additional infrastructure costs money.

It's as simple as that. It's certainly not a lack of rainfall, or climate change or any other nonsense some halfwit will try and suggest.

[Terminator X]

alangla said:

Wonder what the daily leakage is for that water company

Not to worry, £billions paid to shareholders

TX.

Edit - perhaps related, happens all over the country?

"A freedom of information request by the Guardian found that Coca-Cola extracts the largest amount of resources of any drinks brand in England, with a permit to drain 1.59 billion litres per year from boreholes in Sidcup, Kent. It also has permits in place to extract 377 million litres for bottled water brands Abbey Well and Glaceau Smartwater from Morpeth, Northumberland"

Edited by Terminator X on Friday 29th May 23:29

[Yertis]

If more national infrastructure - let’s say water, electricity and gas supply - were renationslised, would that mean the government would be more likely to invest and improve the infrastructure, rather than spaff money on ‘welfare’. Or would the infrastructure be just as crap, the government citing welfare obligations as reason not to invest?

[OutInTheShed]

Yertis said:

If more national infrastructure - let s say water, electricity and gas supply - were renationslised, would that mean the government would be more likely to invest and improve the infrastructure, rather than spaff money on welfare . Or would the infrastructure be just as crap, the government citing welfare obligations as reason not to invest?

It would all be like HS2.
20 years late and only taking water to a quarter of the people who had it already.

[Chrisgr31]

I am in East Sussex and South East Water's ability to actually supply the product in their name is atrocious. Hardly a week goes by without the water being off for several days somewhere in their area. We have had spells where it has been off for a week and for a few days. Tunbridge Wells has had several shortages with it being off for at least a week. They are actually tankering water around the place to try and keep the local network topped up.

They will of course blame the weather and say it hasnt rained. To be fair it hasnt really rained for a couple of months - either since I connected by downpipe to a land drain and wanted rain to see if it drained away! However they havent done any meaningful investment in the network despite all the new build and water leaks are common.

In the meantime of course they have gone from being debt free to heavily debt laden. Had they built a new reservoir or something that would be fine but of course they havent.

[OutInTheShed]

The other thing is, per capita water use at home has roughly doubled since the 60s.

SE water charges 30% less per cubic meter than SW Water. It rains more in the SW.
If you want investment in the supply, people have to pay for it.

If you regulate what can be charged, then that has consequences for investment.
If you regulate an industry badly, it will get out of shape.