Residents in an Oxfordshire townlet have been forced to depend on deliveries of bottled and tanker water, as half of the UK population could be encountering a hosepipe prohibition within weeks.
Northend, on the Buckinghamshire border, usually gets its water from the now dried-up Stokenchurch Reservoir, which has been impacted by the scorching heatwave temperatures, with little rain anticipated to help reduce the threat of drought, which has prompted water bans and fire warnings.
Thames Water had to send water tankers and bottles to its residents, struggling after increased demand for the natural resource in recent hot weeks.
The company has also just reported it will be issuing a hosepipe prohibition for 15 million customers across London, Surrey and Gloucestershire in the forthcoming weeks.
Andrew Sells, head of Natural England between 2014 and 2019, blamed water companies for peddling off reservoirs which could have helped ease drought to housing developers.
He wrote in a newspaper outlet that several of their water companies preferred to build houses on some of their reservoirs and that they learned that together they have built exactly zero new reservoirs in the past 30 years.
He said that no doubt some reservoirs had reached the end of their working lives, but in ditching this infrastructure, without any replacements, they had again put short-term gains ahead of long-term supply.
The companies which have sold off decommissioned reservoirs in recent years include Thames Water, Severn Trent and Southern Water.
It comes as millions of Britons could be facing a hosepipe ban after a leaked paper disclosed three more water companies were scheduling restrictions.
Britain’s largest water company, Thames Water, which provides some 15 million people, said it would announce a ban in the forthcoming weeks.
Restrictions covering nearly three million people have already been reported by Southern Water, South East Water and Welsh Water, and an internal Environmental Agency document seen by a newspaper outlet revealed that the water companies discussing whether to bring in a ban were Yorkshire, with five million customers, Severn Trent with eight million and South West with up to two million, and if legislated, it would bring the number of people under a hosepipe ban to about 33 million.
Meanwhile, Tory leadership frontrunner Liz Truss has weighed on hosepipe bans after two water companies reported others cautioned they may need to follow suit, following the driest eight months from November to June since 1976 as well as the driest July on record for regions of southern and eastern England.
Our water bill pays for the infrastructure. The same infrastructure these so-called professional institutions let rot for so long.
But this is what they call the ‘human cull’ – are you ready for it?
And it’s easier and more affordable for water companies to impose a hosepipe ban than build and maintain acceptable water infrastructure, but you might have noticed that there have been no environmental campaigners out in protest.
Typically when we have an extremely hot summer, nobody panics, there’s no hysteria, we all just get along with it and enjoyed the gorgeous summer and everything generally works out okay. But now we have all the fearmongering and complete balderdash.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 