Drought, Yet Again...

This is a dedicated thread for discussing article: Drought, Yet Again...

What a thoroughly sensible and logical article you have written.

When are the authorities going to understand that you cannot play around with the supply of water. You cannot build on flood plains and you cannot rely on the banning of hosepipes to solve the problem. The first culprits to sort out are water companies. The way they treat this valuable resource is tantamount to being criminal.

Water cannot be treated like petrol or oil.

The only interest the water companies have is making a profit, and the best way of making a profit is by charging as much as possible for water. They certainly do not want to sell less water.

spot on ron, lets hope the holistic approach gets adopted

Excellent article, Ron; in fact, without knowing you'd written it, I wrote the same things almost word for word yesterday! You've saved me the trouble of finishing it!

I'd pick you up on a couple of very small points; firstly, car washes almost universally recycle their water these days. But by the same token, why doesn't the government insist that they all use ONLY rainwater recycled from the vast petrol pump canopies?

Leakage is a cost issue but not a water issue; after all, the water leaks back into the groundwater, so it hasn't gone anywhere. And there's the real problem; there's not enough rain to keep us going. Whether you put that down to global warming/weirding or cyclic weather patterns, we need to find ways to prevent so much fresh water reaching the sea, and that needs a complete overhaul; of our waterways and farming practises.

But you are absolutely spot on about metering; I have launched an e-petition calling for the urgent and compulsory introduction of water metering across domestic and business supplies. When it goes live, will you give it your support?

Just throw another a few extra questions into the conundrum.
Where does the bottled water come from that is on the shelves of most shops these days .How much in gallons are actually taken out of the system to supply this need? and How much in gallons are sitting on shelves Warehouses and at plants awaiting the shelves ?
If anybody could get the figures together, it would surprise quite a few people I shouldn't wonder.

little oik said:

Just throw another a few extra questions into the conundrum.
Where does the bottled water come from that is on the shelves of most shops these days .How much in gallons are actually taken out of the system to supply this need? and How much in gallons are sitting on shelves Warehouses and at plants awaiting the shelves ?
If anybody could get the figures together, it would surprise quite a few people I shouldn't wonder.

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Interesting question. Nobody can object to bottling water for drinking; it's not as if people are buying it to flush the bog (as they do with mains water). In terms of volume, it won't even come close to the hundreds of millions of litres lost from the pipes through leakage. Or the gallons used to flush the bog.

little oik said:

Just throw another a few extra questions into the conundrum.
Where does the bottled water come from that is on the shelves of most shops these days .How much in gallons are actually taken out of the system to supply this need? and How much in gallons are sitting on shelves Warehouses and at plants awaiting the shelves ?
If anybody could get the figures together, it would surprise quite a few people I shouldn't wonder.

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and fizzy drinks as well.

and Pot Noodles

I was just trying to highlight one small part of the water usage or wastage as the case may be .
Consumer led products like drinks (soft and alcoholic) being stockpiled.
Bigger populations in certain areas Require more and more water .(due to consumption of households )
Agriculture have changed crops to a degree that although they mature a lot earlier they need far more water .
More Livestock to feed growing populations means more water needed.
No new reservoirs built to store water in the wet months .
Leaks would need a lot of monies and disruption to fix but the water does end up back where it first started .
Even down to Population increases ,as this takes water out of the "system" (the body is made up of a large percentage water don't forget.

The Earth has a given amount of water .How this is used and distributed is to some degree out of our hands .However to me the situation is not going to get any better just worse.

Anybody thought where all the hydrogen powered vehicles ( if the scientist have there way )are going to get their refills???? Or will this mean even more water will be taken out of the system.After all you do not to drive to live .
Water is a far more precious commodity than oil .Until more people realise this then nothing will change

MarkTheSpark said:

Or the gallons used to flush the bog.

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Cure for that is

[ame=http://youtu.be/_IbCHgJjZ60]Meet the Fockers - If It's Yellow... - YouTube[/ame]

In an effort to convey our concerns about the problems our rivers face with excessive abstraction, I have launched a single-issue e-petition. If we get 10,000 signatories, it will get into the Prime Minister's hands.

Please sign it. You can find it HERE

Mark, just to point out that I am the writer of the above piece: Rod, not Ron - just thought I'd mention it! Yes, I take your point about car washes. As far as leakage is concerned, I think you are wrong: leakage does not all seep bak into the ground, and if it did, I'm not sure that it would find its way back into an aquifer. A lot of is soaked up by vegetation and/or eveaporates. Most of it proably goes straight down the drain in urban areas and ends up going out to sea, like floodwater. Final point: your petition re metering. It's an excellent idea (the petition, that is), but I'm afraid such things need publicity and media exposure to succeed. In other words, it is our representative organisation (the Angling Trust) which should be mounting this campaign. In fact I've tokld them this, and urged them to get on with it. It would bring anglers good cred as environmentalists to be seen pushing for this. My own view is that sooner or later, compulsory metering will come anyway. But of course, the sooner the better... Cheers, Rod

Rod said:

Mark, just to point out that I am the writer of the above piece: Rod, not Ron - just thought I'd mention it! Yes, I take your point about car washes. As far as leakage is concerned, I think you are wrong: leakage does not all seep bak into the ground, and if it did, I'm not sure that it would find its way back into an aquifer. A lot of is soaked up by vegetation and/or eveaporates. Most of it proably goes straight down the drain in urban areas and ends up going out to sea, like floodwater. Final point: your petition re metering. It's an excellent idea (the petition, that is), but I'm afraid such things need publicity and media exposure to succeed. In other words, it is our representative organisation (the Angling Trust) which should be mounting this campaign. In fact I've tokld them this, and urged them to get on with it. It would bring anglers good cred as environmentalists to be seen pushing for this. My own view is that sooner or later, compulsory metering will come anyway. But of course, the sooner the better... Cheers, Rod

Click to expand...

We are both partially right on the subject of leakage, I think. Some will, as you say, get no further than the nearest plant but a proportion, I would think, will get back into the aquifer.

I was walking the River Nene near my home yesterday. It's bank-high and rushing past old water meadows on its way to the sea. If it were flooding the meadows as it once did, it would be causing less erosion and feeding the aquifer to some extent, but we are mired in the water engineering of the 1970s and seem to have no will to put it right.