BBC1 8.30 about industrial water abstraction & why it's ruining our rivers

Thanks for the heads up.
DL

BL88dy T**ser from the waterboard ( I think he was anyhow) saying all they are doing is for the consumer, what a load of b&%ll%$x.
As for selling water from the north to the south how they going to do that?
Big tankers??
Shame about the Kennet,
2 problems.
1/ We waste gallons of water both in households and leaks, the government should nail the water authorities to fix them
2/ Poor management of resources.
People should pay for water on useage as per other utilities however have a sliding scale of use eg: first 2000lts at a cheap rate then charge a rising rate per 1000 litre.
Households will soon start to think more about leaving a tap running!

Hi all watched this last night; I used to be in the pipeline business for the gas board and oil industry for 20 odd years and in that time never once got a job building a water line anywhere in the U.K. built a few sewer outfalls though. I wait to be contradicted but in my mind there is no infrastructure for transporting water around the country.Noel

I was in Bibury (Cotswolds) last week to take the kids to the trout farm, the river there has always been lush and clear teaming with escapees from the farm. Not so, the river bed was covered in what looked like silt, just as in the show after the sewer outlet in the Kennet. The level was also down 6-8 inches and the water foliage dull and listless.

Not sure this is the reason but it pains me to see the river dead, hopefully a decent downpour will flush it back to life.

I think the whole shifting water around the country is simply robbing Peter to pay Paul. Presumably it is OK to deplete northern rainfed rivers?

Some of the Mayfly in the Classroom stuff we did in Staffordshire with Severn Trent Water's education officer worked very hard on getting the kids to take up water saving activities. This included using flush savers in the cistern, only using a mugful of water for cleaning teeth (rather than leaving the tap running), washing the car with a bucket rather than a running hosepipe etc. The water savings can be enormous.

A calculator for domestic water wastage (i.e. wastage that we can do something about ourselves) here:

Home water audit : Save water : Severn Trent Water

You can just put in any name for "family name" at the beginning to get past the first page.

The Germans went on water saving kicks in the 80's so a large part of their sanitary technology is already set for minimising water usage.

The current problem is that since there is so little waste water the pipes are not getting cleaned properly meaning undiluted waste is blocking up/corroding pipes all over the place and the county councils have to spend lots and lots of money on high pressure cleaning equipment sending, in equivalent, 2-3 times the old water-usage quantities down the pipes to clean them.

This is a really good guide too:

Interactive house : Save water : Severn Trent Water

Some quick facts:

Sink
Did you know...that a tap left dripping for a whole year can waste 27,000 litres of water? This is usually because of a faulty washer and can be easily fixed.

Toothbrush
Simply turning the tap off whilst brushing your teeth and washing your hands can save over 5 litres of water every minute. If everyone did this we could save enough to supply 450,000 homes with water each year.

Toilet
Did you know...The toilet is one of the largest water users in the home, using up to 43 litres per person per day (33% of your daily use).

save-a-flush
Get a free save-a-flush from SaveWaterSaveMoney - If your toilet was installed before 2001 and has a 7.5 litre flush or more, you could save 1 litre every time you flush by fitting a FREE ‘save-a-flush’ bag.

Shower
Showering for one minute less than normal could save up to 10,000 litres of water in a year

A while ago (probably mid 90's) Yorks water proposed to move water from Northumbia down a series of watercourses to solve a shortage in their area (around York).

There were a number of public meetings and objections from allsorts of organisations; notably NAFAC representing anglers amd fisheries.

The plan was thrown out on environmental grounds and Yorks Water had to use a fleet of trucks to shift the water.

That's an interesting conundrum...

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That is likely to be massive nutrient enrichment from the fish farm effluent, coupled with low flows in the receiving water. The grey coating is bacterial growth (with the common name "sewage fungus" - although it is actually bacteria growing on the huge nutrient input). The bacterial respiration strips the oxygen out of the water and suffocates fish and invertebrates.