scienceplease 2
Trustworthy Freedom Fighter
Joined: 06 Apr 2009
Posts: 1702
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 Posted: Thu May 03, 2012 8:59 pm Post subject: Standpipes in 2013? Contrived water shortage? |
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| Quote: | How politicians could end droughts FOREVER: But they don't want to
They'd rather ration your water than do some simple sums
By Lewis Page 2nd May 2012 13:37 GMT
Analysis Last month in old London town and across England, formal water rationing came into force again for the second time in just six years - and the creeping rationing of water meters continued to spread. Despite the rainiest April since records began, government minsters are openly speculating that total mains cutoffs and standpipes in the street may be required next year.
And yet, astonishingly, it would require only a small investment - far less than has been spent on fixing leaky pipes in recent years - to render the capital's water supplies completely and utterly drought-proof, forever. All the fresh, drinkable water the city's population requires for its taps, its showers and its hosepipes could be produced without taking a drop from rivers, aquifers or reservoirs, at minimal cost and with only a tiny impact on energy use and carbon emissions.
In short, Britons' water is being needlessly rationed in a staggeringly pointless effort to limit energy consumption and carbon emissions by a very small amount - a move driven, as is so very normal, by a political (and civil service) agenda which seems completely divorced from the hard numbers surrounding the issue.
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Here are the hard numbers in a nutshell, using London as a case study for the whole of the UK - and indeed the entire developed world.
Average normal water consumption by the capital's 8 million people is 167 litres per person per day: just to be clear, this includes the use of hosepipes for watering gardens, washing vehicles etc. Almost all of this water at the moment is taken from rivers or extracted from groundwater. These supplies are finite and depend ultimately on rainfall. As the city's population has grown, it has gradually become the case that they may not cope with demand during prolonged dry spells.
But modern technology can be used to cheaply turn seawater, the supply of which is effectively infinite, into fresh drinking water by desalinating it. Alone among British water companies London's Thames Water does actually possess a single desalination plant, at Beckton on the Thames Estuary, but this only has the capacity to produce 150 million litres a day - less than 10 per cent of the city's requirements - and it is run at low output or completely shut down most of the time.
In general, desalinating seawater in a modern reverse-osmosis plant like Beckton requires the use of 7 kilowatt-hours (kWh or "units" on your electricity bill) of electrical energy to produce a tonne (1,000 litres) of drinking water. In fact, Beckton requires significantly less energy than this as estuarine water is not as salty as seawater proper, but this article is meant for a wider audience than just Londoners, so let's assume 7 kWh/tonne to begin with.
In order to make all the water a person requires, then, a desalination plant needs approximately 1 kWh per day. A kilowatt-hour, purchased on the wholesale electricity markets, can generally be obtained for six pence or less at the moment: the necessary energy would cost a water company say £22 per person annually.
Total electricity cost for a whole year's water supply from the sea, London wide? About £176m, less than Thames Water's profit margin even in hard times; much less when the company is doing well. And of course in reality there would be no need to use desalination for the entire supply (this would actually cause flooding1). Also, in reality, we are speaking of brackish water not brine. So we can see that using desalination to make London drought-proof would cost very little.
But what about capital investment? Maybe desalination plants are really expensive. Maybe that's why we only have one proper one in the whole of the UK, and why we are so often told there's a drought on and we must expect hardships.
Nope: Beckton cost just £270m to build. Another 15 such plants - enough to provide London's entire water supply if required - would cost approximately £4bn, an investment of just £500 for each person living in the city. Enough desalination plants to provide half the supply, which would make the city completely drought-proof for the foreseeable future, could have been built for less money than Thames Water has spent reducing leaks in the last nine years - and the leaks programme, while highly disruptive to the city as roads have been torn up in order to replace old pipes, has delivered only comparatively minor water savings.
So that's the reality of water supply and modern technology. For a trivial cost, we can make all the fresh water we need out of seawater.
So it's really very plain that there's no possible excuse for ever imposing standpipes or hosepipe bans or any other form of water rationing on Londoners or indeed anyone else - certainly anybody who lives in a developed nation within reach of the sea (the great majority of the human race lives near the sea or tidal estuaries connected to it). Modern reverse-osmosis technology means that we can use small amounts of energy to make as much fresh drinking water as we want, and the costs are small enough that the resulting water is too cheap to meter. Running an oven for an hour or two, remember, consumes enough energy to make an entire tonne of water.
And yet here we are in the year 2012, in one of the planet's greatest and richest cities, with water rationing in force and worse rationing being foretold. What on Earth is going on?
Briefly, politics is going on...
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There's another 2 web pages on the subject...
Contrived shortage, so that someone can make a profit, I think 
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/02/water_vs_energy_analysis/ |
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TonyGosling
Editor
Joined: 25 Jul 2005
Posts: 18335
Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
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| Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 7:05 pm Post subject: |
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Thames Water accused of 'mismanagement' by closing two dozen reservoirs One of Britain’s biggest water companies has been accused of worsening the drought by closing two dozen reservoirs in the South East over past two decades.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/drought/9236909/Thames-Water-accused- of-mismanagement-by-closing-two-dozen-reservoirs.html
600m Gallons Reservoirs Closed
Tuesday 1st May 2012
CLOSING RESERVOIRS IN SOUTH EAST WHILE NOT DIVERTING WATER FROM SEVERN AS RAINFALL RUNS INTO SEA IS SERIOUS MISMANAGEMENT SAYS GMB
http://www.gmb.org.uk/newsroom/latest_news/600m_gallons_reservoirs_clo sed.aspx
The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee must call on Thames Water, the other private water companies, The Environment Agency and Ofwat to account for allowing parts of this nation to run short of water says GMB
GMB, the union for water workers, is asking MPs on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee to call Thames Water and the regulatory bodies to account for the closure of 25 bulk water storage facilities in the South East before implementing plans to divert water from Severn. This leaves rainfall running off to the sea while the region is subject to drought orders.
Less than 1% of the UK rainfall is diverted to be collected and stored to be used for human purposes. See list of water storage facilities closed in notes to editors below. Maps are attached as pdfs.
GMB has previously complained that Thames Water has not developed the disused Severn Thames canal course to divert water into the region from water in the Severn running off to the sea. See table in notes to editors below for average water usage per day by area in 2005. GMB is updating this table. See also map of course of Severn Thames canal as pdf.
Gary Smith, GMB National Secretary for Water, said “The mission of a water undertaking is to deliver the water needed for human purposes and for industry. That requires proper direction and management. Both have been sadly missing in Britain for the past twenty years.
Storage and transfer are two of the main elements of water resource management: one to move water from times of plenty to times of shortage; the other to convey water from places where it is plentiful to areas where it is in short supply. The third basic element is treatment to regulate water quality.
It cannot be repeated often enough that there is no shortage of water in Britain. We divert only a small fraction of the throughput of our water cycle for human purposes. We use less than 1% of total UK rainfall and less than 10% in the South East.
The best guide to theory is practice. Closing 25 water storage facilities in the south east before diverting water into the region from the Severn has left the region short of water twice in the space of six years.
Water is a natural monopoly. Yet the recent White Paper looks to introduce “competition”, a nonsense policy to further mis-directing managers on top of privatisation. Since 1990 Thames Water has paid out £5 billion as dividends to shareholders, raised from households, that should have been used to divert water into South East and Eastern England.
The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee must call Thames Water, the other private water companies, The Environment Agency and Ofwat to account for needlessly allowing parts of this nation to run short of water.”
Ends
Contact: Gary Smith, GMB National Secretary on 07710618 909 or Mick Ainsley, GMB London Region Organiser on 07974 250947 or GMB Press Office, Rose Conroy on 07974 251823 or Steve Pryle on 07921 289880.
Notes to Editors:
See list of water storage facilities closed. Maps 1 & 2 are attached as pdfs.
Thames Water - Water storage facilities closed with dates
Cheshunt Reservoir South – closed 2004. Sold for housing with plans for 249 flats and houses to be built.
Bath Road Reservoir – underground reservoir complex, covering 5.38 acres, in Reading . closed 1993. Thames Water tried to sell it for 100 houses but the bid was rejected in 2009. Thames Water still hoping to put houses on the site.
Barn Elms Water Works – closed 1990- Reservoir in Barnes sold for housing and part used establishing a wetlands centre. The original site housed 4 reservoirs and filter beds. 105 acres now make up The London Wetland Centre. The land where the filter beds were located is new housing. The total capacity of these four reservoirs was around 570 million gallons – enough to supply London’s current needs for 24 hours.
Lonsdale Road Reservoirs- closed from 1960 onwards – now the Leg of Mutton Nature Reserve and the adjoining water works (covered reservoir) is now part of the sports ground of St Paul’s Prep School. The original Barnes site housed 3 reservoirs and a water works
Stoke Newington East Reservoir – now a nature reserve- closed 1980s
Stoke Newington West Reservoir – now a water sports education centre- closed in 1980s
Kempton Park Reservoir – in Hounslow, nature reserve. The original site housed 2 reservoirs. Closed in 1980
Molesey Reservoirs – closed in 1999, used for the extraction of sand and gravel. The original site contained 7 reservoirs, 4 in the Chelsea reservoir and 3 in labeth reservoir.
Holtwhites Reservoir Enfield – 0.57 acres. - Part-subterranean disused reservoir. Principle frontage onto Drapers Road and secondary frontage to Holtwhites Hill. Sold for housing (Fairview New Homes) planning permission applied for 2011. Plans for 48 new high quality residential units (flats and houses)
Lea Bridge water works and filter beds – now the Water Works Nature Reserve- mothballed in 1969.
Middlesex Filter Beds – now a nature reserve- mothballed from 1969.
Buckhurst Hill – 48 apartments situated on a former Thames Water site planning permission 2004.
Hornsey Water Works and reservoirs– South site of the water works sold for apartments and New River village built from 2006.
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"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
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