UK may need standpipes if drought continues, environment secretary warns
As readers will know I am enjoying living vicariously through the 70s again via the excellent BBC documentary on Monday nights.
I reflected recently in this context that, in the light of whopping utility bills, perhaps nationalised industries weren’t all bad. This article below made me yearn for the certainty of good old fashioned droughts. I remembered 1976 when the sun poured down and reservoirs dried out. In our current unpleasant and counterintuitive world we are up to our chins in water and facing the threat of standpipes. Where did it all go wrong?
This article tells us:
Standpipes might be needed in the streets in parts of England next year if the country has its third dry winter in a row, the environment secretary has warned.
Millions of consumers already facing hosepipe bans and warnings to save water were given the grim news as Caroline Spelman insisted the present “temporary restrictions” on non-essential use were designed to ensure “we don’t have to move to more stringent restrictions later”.
But she told the BBC’s Inside Out programme, to be screened on Wednesday night: “Whereas it’s most unlikely we would have standpipes this year, if we have another dry winter that becomes more likely.”
Spelman’s warning, coming after the wettest April on record and warnings of more heavy, thundery rain on the way for southern England and Wales, reinforces the message from water companies that they will be unlikely to lift the hosepipe bans any time soon. Seventeen counties are already under water restrictions and experts say groundwater levels are still low.