Thames Water: Warnings London could face water rationing ‘imminent’

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July 12, 2023, at 08:28 GMT

Updated 20 minutes ago

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The reservoirs and chalk streams are said to have dried up

London could face “imminent” water rationing due to over-extraction, over-use and waste through leaky pipes.

Environmental analyst James Wallace, chief executive of River Action, made the warning during a meeting with the Greater London Authority (GLA).

He said the chalk streams that feed the capital’s water supply were drying up.

Thames Water, London’s main water supplier, said a national change was needed in how water was used.

The company also said it had no plans to rationalize usage.

At an Environment Committee meeting on the resilience of London’s water supply, Wallace said many streams in the Chilterns, which feed water supplies to north London, were permanently dry and some were only at 25% of normal flow rates.

“It means we will see water rationing in north London imminent. We are not talking about 20, 30 or 40 years,” he said.

When are we going to treat this as an emergency?

“I appreciate that drilling a reservoir takes time, but some of those things, like changing intake requirements, lowering consumer demand, fixing leaky pipes, this is a national crisis and we need to address it that way.”

However, the company’s interim CEO, Catherine Ross, told GLA that a third of that amount was actually “unmeasured consumer use” rather than a loss through holes in the company’s pipes. She added that the introduction of water meters will mean that customers can be charged more accurately.

“Take water for granted”

She said the government’s water plan – which aims to halve leaks by 2050 and reduce consumer use from an average of 144 liters per person per day to 110 – was not enough.

In response to a question about managing water resources, she said: “Yes, there is more we need to do.

“But we actually need to change our national conversation about water, we need to change the way we think about water.

“We need to understand, for example, that the rainfall in London is somewhat the same as in Jerusalem, and we don’t live in a wet country where we can take water for granted.”

The BBC asked Thames Water about this comparison between London and Jerusalem. The company said the matter was not taken lightly and that it had made the allegation before.

According to Met Office data collected from Kew, southwest London, the capital receives an average of 627mm of precipitation annually. By comparison, central Jerusalem sees an average of 522 millimeters of rain each year, according to the Israel Meteorological Service.

The Met Office also said that Jerusalem does not experience rain during the summer while it rains in London all year round.

Ms Ross said 80% of Thames Water’s customers had already used the government’s target of 110 liters a day, but 20% of them used a lot, mostly to irrigate gardens.

It said the company wanted to alleviate supply problems by building a 150 billion liter reservoir in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.

The project faced local opposition.

Ross admitted that many of the company’s tubes were “old assets” that should have been replaced but that customers could not cover the cost. Thames Water later said it was because of the rules on how they charge consumers.

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Aging infrastructure has caused mass leaks, says Thameswater

Thames Water, along with other companies, has promised to upgrade its infrastructure to reduce sewage discharge, but has spent the past few weeks fending off speculation about its financial collapse and nationalization over a £14bn debt pile.

Wallace said this was the result of “greedy” exploitation from shareholders. In particular, he blamed Macquarie, an Australian financial firm, former part-owner, for loading Thames Water with debt.

In response, a Macquarie spokesperson said, “We’ve supported the company as it made record levels of capital investment in its network, helping to reduce water leaks by 22% while keeping customer bills among the lowest in the country.”

Thames Water is currently owned by a group of foreign pension funds and sovereign wealth funds.

Thames Water failed to meet its target this year for reducing leakages as well as those related to sewage flooding, pollution, blockages and customer use.

The company has not been profitable, Ross said, and this year it made an after-tax loss of £30m.

It declined to give an opinion on whether privatization had failed, saying it had not “thought much” about whether the water industry would be better off if it remained publicly owned.

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