Water Shortage??

[louisa06]

I was watching the evening news last night and they had the article on a family conserving water,having a shower instead of a bath, filling the dishwasher completely before starting it etc.. what i do not understand is this planet is 80% (its raining every other day in england) all it takes is purifying and filtering it, we have plenty of it no excuses i think the word is LAZY the goverment wants to complain and tell us what we can do and can't do.

[ugly_bob]

desalification is expensive.

East Anglia gets on average less rain than Israel

There's plenty of water up North, not enough down South, and no national grid to transport it

[stoo_pid]

I presume you meant to say the planet is 80% water. That's not quite accurate I'm afraid. True, 80% of the planet's surface is covered in water, but approx 97% of that water is saltwater and 2% of it is locked away in glaciers. Less than 1% of all the water in Earth's water cycle is useable by humans - and that is before it is treated. Furthermore, that 1% is an average across the planet - some parts of the world (or in the context of your point, the UK) have water shortages, some don't.

If anyone is lazy its Joe Public. We're the ones who use car washes, hose pipes, dishwashers, etc. (Also, the government haven't called the hose-pipe bans, that's down to the privately-owned, profit-led, not-very-well-run, water companies.)

[ianess]

Doesn't it just make you wonder how the rest of the civilised world copes?
OK....certain countries have serious drought problems but surely in this country the problem is one of wastage and leakage.
One question that never seems to get a proper answer is why do we need ALL water to be of drinking water purity? After all, the supermarkets are full of plastic bottles of the stuff, so do we really need to flush our toilets with pure water?
Eliminate the leaks and the wastage and there should be no problem.
WE are one of the world's super-powers aren't we? We did invent almost everything that was worth inventing. Are we so besotted with making money out of anything and everything just to make the rich richer that we can't sort out the basics?

[BigDogsWang]

The Times ran a very late April Fools article yesterday about possibly 'lassoing' Iceburgs and using tug boats to tow them back to England, where they could be stored in deep water docks and put to good use.

Not much use in a 90 degree summer though!

(Why not fill the dock with Jack Daniels and Coke, and have one MASSIVE party!!)

[jake-the-peg]

Ianess makes a very good point about drinking water purity water being used for flushing toilets etc.

I imagine the answer is the cost of an entirely seperate distribution system.

The logical follow on is therefore the installation of rainwater tanks in houses to use filterred water from guttering for such purposes.

However while much of the supply is unmetered and relatively cheap there's not much incentive to install such systems. There's a fair case to suggest that government should introduce legislation to require such systems in all new build houses.

It'd be intresting to see if the water industry supported such a move or not.

[noxlumos]

We have a small cottage in Ireland and installed the system to purify rainwater ourselves. It was easy and realatively cheap. If you want to check out good cheap systems/designs try looking at "earthships" just google and you'll find hoards about them. If we can ever get planning permission from the blinkered un-ecofriendly council we'll be building an earthship, but at the moment there are only 2 that I know of in the UK, one in Brighton and one in Scotland, but check out the New Mexico ones and some of them are amazing:)

[Gef]

The UK gets more than enough rain. The problem lies with the Water Companies. When they took over they complained about the Victorian infrastructure which was not up to the job - massive leaks etc etc. However they are not prepared to put any of their vast profits into relacing it - they want us or the Government to do that. They are a jioke but we will pay for it in the long term.

[jake-the-peg]

Zacsmaster, there's little or no power requirement to such systems. We're not talking about recovering rain water for drinking here toilets and washing machines use large quantities of drinking water. They can easily use filterred rain water.

Pump, tank and filter - it's not rocket science

Even if you use UV sterilisation to make the water good for drinking or bathing they use less than 100W when in use.

As for all that old cr@p about the UK getting more than enough rain that the papers love to spout it's worth noting that with our population we get less rain per head of population than Sudan

[ludwig]

Blimey, how many people live in Sudan - about 3?

[jake-the-peg]

No 37 million

Wonder if they flush toilets with drinking water

[JudgeJ]

Your comparison of the Sudan with Britain is a little disingenuous, jake. Sudan is almost twelve times as large as Britain and with half the population it is not surprising that it gets more rainfall per head than we do. However, they too have their problems because most of their rain falls in the south-west of the country, with large swathes of the north and east bone dry. However, you can prove anything with statistics so here�s my view.

About two feet of water (on average) falls upon GB each year. If my quick arithmetic is correct (and I�m sure I�ll be told if it is not) this equates (very roughly) to about half a million gallons for every man, woman and child in the country, or about 1400 gallons each per day. Yes, I know it does not all fall in the right places at the right time, and much of it is not collected, but that is where the water companies come in. It is their function to collect it, store it, purify it (and they still choose to purify all of it to drinking water standard when only about 1% of it is drunk), and get it to the right places at the right time. It is not their function to ration it.

To help them the country is intersected at regular and convenient intervals by quite large rivers. At present there is a large water supply pipe to the west of London which has been broken for some time. This is preventing large quantities of water being pumped from the Thames to reservoirs near Heathrow airport. So all the recent rain the Thames has been conveniently funnelling from the Cotswolds towards the capital is passing merrily by and being emptied into the sea.

Water is not a scarce resource in this country though the water companies are doing a sterling job in making people believe this is so. Water supply companies with vision and the will to succeed are the scarcity which is causing the current problem.

[Maggie-Mae]

I have heard that a person in the third world drought ridden country can, in one day, survive on the equivalent amount of water that we use in each toilet flush. They can use this amount of water for cooking, washing, laundry etc - I think that puts it all in perspective of how wasteful the western world can be with our resources.