back to article How politicians could end droughts forever But they don't want to

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 …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmmm, I think there's a page missing

    Where are the bits about pumping water uphill and transporting the sudden massive influx of dirty salt?

    Not that I'm disagreeing with Lewis. I've been looking for more problems with this for a while.

    NB: Yes, I did see the idiotic post about tower blocks. I'm ignoring it for obvious reasons.

  2. MrXavia
    Go

    Lets get these desalination plants built!!!

    What I dont get is how in the fens we have to have pumps to stop us from becoming a bog again, but STILL have water restrictions? what are they doing with all that pumped water I see flowing out towards the sea every day?

  3. Jamie Kitson

    Numbers

    Does your "167 litres per person per day" include leaks? Because they're not going to go away if you desalinate, so if not then your figures are going to be out, and IIRC wastage through leaks is actually greater than actual usage.

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: wastage through leaks

      http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17622837

      At least one of "your recollection" and "Auntie's recent article on this very subject" is mistaken.

      1. Jamie Kitson

        Re: wastage through leaks

        I could have just read boot note 3:

        Leakage today is down to 600 million litres a day, meaning that London actually needs supplies increased by half again over what people use.

  4. Dave Bell
    Boffin

    Stpupid Reactions

    We're officially in a drought.

    Beckton should be running flat-out, 24/7, until the drought stops.

  5. Tony Barnes

    How much carbon now?

    Did I miss this in the article? How much carbon / cash is used / spent on the current water treatment system?

    Surely the cost of a new system should be it's total cost minus the cost of the old system?

    Also would be worth factoring in the business related costs associated with having the decking road dug up all the time....

    Sounds like a great plan though

    1. Some Beggar

      Re: How much carbon now?

      You don't reduce those existing costs. The desalination plants top up the reservoirs - the rest of the system remains the same. How do you imagine desalination will prevent leaks or stop the roads from being dug up?

  6. NomNomNom

    "Because, we are told, desalination is "carbon intensive". That is, the energy used in a reverse-osmosis plant involves serious CO2 emissions."

    Told by who? Ie [citation needed]

    It's striking that in the whole article no quotes are provided to support the various links made to the phantom green menace.

    The only near exception is this part: "Maybe we should, in fact, stop watering our gardens, stop washing our cars - even stop washing our clothes and ourselves, as some scientists advocate."

    To which the article linked to quoted the scientist as saying:

    "Advertisers [have] convinced us that our shirts must always be "whiter than white", our sheets should forever smell of spring flowers, and that to be dressed in freshly laundered clothes at all times is a badge of success. We live in a "wear once and wash" culture."

    But it doesn't look like he's saying stop washing clothes as claimed. What he's saying is more along the lines of don't wear them just once between washes, which is very different than not washing them *at all*

    1. NomNomNom

      Actually after reading up about the London desalination plant - mainly newspaper articles at the time it was proposed and after it was built, I see there was opposition to it from environmental groups due to it's high energy use, including CO2 emissions. I'll leave my post up above but just add this as a correction.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Water_Desalination_Plant#cite_note-5

      http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2004/jun/14/water.environment

  7. SirDigalot

    doesn't matter how much water you produce or find

    if it cannot get where it is going, gallons of the bloody stuff falls from the sky almost on a daily basis, it is fairly clean too, well, sort of, however, in the end once you have captured it made it potable enough for the plebs, you have to get it to them, and that has been the issue, apparently they are using some super-lightweight pipe design that has 50% of the weight of normal pipe, but also has 50% more holes.

    That said the UK is frightfully overcrowded.

    rainbarrels FTW - and preferably hot girls washing their hair in them like i remember some hair product advert on the boobtube years ago....

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Building and running a desal plant is not cheap...

    As the state of Victoria in Australia found out:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonthaggi_desalination_plant

    "Cost

    The capital cost for the project was initially estimated to be $2.9 billion in the initial feasibility study, this was later revised to $3.1 billion[18] and then to $3.5 billion. After the winning bidder was announced it was revised to $4 billion.

    Operating costs are to be charged by a private firm over a 25–30 year period and are estimated to be around $1.5 billion. This includes labour, replacement of membranes, chemicals costs and energy, and were initially estimated at $132 million per annum.[19] Unlike previous water infrastructure works in Melbourne, the plant will be built and operated as a public-private partnership.

    A report by the Water Services Association of Australia conducted in 2008, modelling several national water-supply scenarios for 2030, determined that sourcing water supply from seawater desalination was the most energy-intensive. The report predicted that if desalination became the primary source of supplying around 300 litres (66 imp gal; 79 US gal) per person per day, energy usage would rise by 400% above today's levels."

    1. Tim99 Silver badge

      Re: Building and running a desal plant is not cheap...

      Maybe the State of Victoria is not very good at it? The State of Western Australia produces about one third of the output of Wonthaggi at about one tenth of the capital cost:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perth_Seawater_Desalination_Plant

      The Binningup plant at Bunbury has already been commissioned, and is expected to be near full capacity later this year:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binningup_Desalination_Plant

      Interestingly the water is usualy of better quality than that from the local groundwater and reservoirs.

    2. Ken Hagan Gold badge
      Unhappy

      Re: Building and running a desal plant is not cheap...

      "Operating costs are to be charged by a private firm over a 25–30 year period and..."

      Sounds like they used PFI to fund it, in which case I'm surprised how cheap it seems to be turning out for them. They should study similar-sized projects in the UK and see how cost overruns *ought* to be done.

    3. Androgynous Cupboard Silver badge

      Australian Experience

      I'd be interested in hearing what the Australian readers have to say to this when they wake up. They have huge water issues, have done for years, and yet desalination hasn't turned out to be the panacea you'd expect - bit of a political disaster as I recall, and they have a lot more land and a lot more sunshine to work with.

      Australians! Now at last is your chance to add something of value! Pipe up, there's a good prisoner.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Australian Experience

        We had a drought for a few decades.

        The drought ended as they invariably do.

        The geen bogeyman shouting loudly from atop Parliament House while disguised as a sentient being "we're all gonna die and it will never rain again and the river systems will never flow again blah blah blah" was proven wrong as such catastrophists invariably have been throughout human history.

        I flew over Australia recently and was astounded at the greenness of it all. Mindboggingingly large amounts of surface water. I recalled my childhood when a trip to Adelaide via Broken Hill was a mass of greenery and not an insignificant amount flooded roadways. The Paroo has been running. Warragamba has overflowed (in itself an event of biblical proportions).

        All bets are off, situation normal, plenty of water, mothball the desal plants.

        I am led to believe that building desalination plants in theEast Coast was and is a pointless, costly exercise, but that is hearsay.

        The problem of youth (and the green lunatic fringe in general) is that few of them are old enough to have lived through the dustbowl storms and the previous periods of long drought and/or massive flooding. The average needs a big sample space.

        Bootnote:

        WA is a desert, and different rules apply than NSW

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Building and running a desal plant is not cheap...

      According to wikipedia 400million liters requires about 100 MW. The source of this is uncited and there is no indication if this it the constant load or per hour.

      Bullshit article, the figures are impossible to justify.

  9. Anonymous Coward 101

    Leaks

    I understand that the big problem with leaks in London is the age of the water pipes and the fact that digging the road up to replace them is hugely inconvenient and costly.

  10. qwertyuiop
    WTF?

    Both candidates?

    "Londoners vote tomorrow in the capital's mayoral elections, but both candidates..."

    and there was me thinking I had to choose between seven candidates! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_mayoral_election,_2012)

    1. Andrew James

      Re: Both candidates?

      The article does continue to say Ken & Boris, who are the only likely winners... which is probably correct.

      1. qwertyuiop

        Re: Both candidates?

        I totally agree, but the fact remains that there are seven candidates, not two.

        </pedant>

        1. Chris Miller

          Only one candidate

          Some bookies are already paying out if you've bet on BoJo (Betfair have him at 1:100).

  11. Stevie

    Um,

    Not arguing the choice issue, nor the worth of investigating the LP option but:

    a) Costs of desalination are not just the costs of the electricity. The plants must be built to do the job and then they must be maintained. These sorts of operations are hell on the old infrastructure, especially when you have brine as part of the equation. All in all, worth properly costing and investigating.

    2) The case for the prosecution swings from London to the UK as a whole and back again. I venture to suggest that London != UK as a whole. Stop trying to sell us this "Lawns for Londoners" plan as a "Greensward for All" one, you cad. We all know that once everyone has paid for the desalinated water the snotty city types will keep it for themselves and everyone else will be showering with gravel.

    Never mind. Once global warming has had its way with the ice-caps, everyone will have all the water they can deal with if that nice Mr Gore is right.

  12. regadpellagru
    Holmes

    Follow the money !

    "... numerically illiterate Greens and journalists."

    This is one part of the problem. Many journalists can't add 2 and 2 without any mistake. So understanding a business case for a water plan, forget it. That's why anyone can persuade them of any number (including numbers in the trillion as they have no idea what they are) without a blink from them.

    The other part of the problem is ... follow the money. And see how it may very well lead to big water companies which sole financial interest is to pressure consumers at 0 investment of any kind. Then, throwing a couple of grands to a political big mouth does the trick of keeping their interest safe.

  13. Spider
    Unhappy

    wrong way round

    There's more than enough water. Just too many people.

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: wrong way round

      Volunteering?

    2. Some Beggar
      Thumb Down

      Re: wrong way round

      First rule of eugenics: start with the eugenicists and misanthropes.

    3. Silverburn

      Re: wrong way round

      Groan...and here come the "volunteer" cliches...

      Surprised nobody has mentioned Soylent Green or death camps yet. Maybe the daily mailers are too busy being close-minded on other forums.

      You do realise that Optimal population planning doesn't require such draconial and unethical measures?

      1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

        Re: draconian measures

        Dunno about 'Optimal population planning' with a capital 'O', so I googled it and I got exactly 1 hit. (I think that's a first for me.) Sadly for this comment thread, it was pointing to an abstract of a paper behind a paywall, so I'm none the wiser.

        I do know that of all the population planning methods ever tried in the whole history of humanity, the only one that worked was raising the economic and educational status of women. However ... I've never heard anyone say "The problem is we have too many people. We must raise educational standards and promote sexual equality until the population begins to fall of its own accord.". Consequently, I get rather tired of people who claim population control or planning as an answer to anything.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Interesting

    Anglian Water claims desalination plants would put the cost of water up by more than ten times. Are we to assume this is bullcrap then?

  15. lee harvey osmond

    Innumeracy?

    I suggest that the reason people denounce reverse-osmosis desalination as carbon intensive is because they don't understand it. They do understand distillation, which is carbon intensive even with lots of fancy heat exchangers to reclaim heat where possible, and so there is a (numbers-free) idea in some people's heads that reverse-osmosis desalination must be as carbon intensive as distillation.

    Which it isn't.

    I drank water produced by reverse-osmosis desalination when on holiday in Tobago. It tasted funny.

    I have read (non-authoritative sources) that there are health implications to persistent ingestion of demineralised water as produced by reverse-osmosis desalination. And (same Wikipedia article) it rots the utility companies' plumbing because it's more acidic. But (same etc) the lack of solutes make it really good for washing cars and assorted industrial processes.

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: Innumeracy?

      When you desalinate water for drinking, I'd imagine you'd add trace minerals back in, to bring it up to similar levels to soft (nancy) Northern water, rather than hard (real men's) Southern water.

      Heart attacks are lower in hard water areas than soft, although I can't remember if there's enough difference to care about or not. But I'd imagine you'd want to re-mineralise desalinated water.

      You're also right that de-mineralised water is bad for metal pipes. You tend to get pinhole corrosion, as it attacks them. Normally where you use this kind of water you use stainless steel or plastic pipe (or just put up with more frequent replacement).

      It is a very interesting set of calculations though. On the con side, you've probably got higher pumping costs, planning difficulties with siting desalination plants, all that energy used, and of course running costs. Those membranes are bloody expensive, and have to be replaced quite frequently.

      But the pro-side is also pretty interesting. You can do less environmental damage by abstracting less from rivers. You should have less problems with drought. Also there's limescale to think about. An awful lot of energy gets wasted on water heating, due to the massive inefficiencies that scale introduces. If you could make South Eastern water soft, then boiler plant would last much longer, and we'd have to use much less energy to get the same amount of water heating done. Plus less need for softening plant, chemicals in cooling towers etc.

      Leakage is pretty much irrelevant though. Those leaky pipes have to be replaced at some point, or they'll fall apart, and it's silly to spend money treating water, to then lose it. Even if fixing leaks looks expensive, it pays off in the long term.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Rising cost of ale

    I was told in my east sussex local that the prices went up by 20p because of the drought not the budget as I had thought.

    1. Sir Runcible Spoon

      Sir

      That makes total sense, after all there are increased costs involved with not having as much water to distribute.

    2. David Pollard

      Re: Rising cost of ale

      Maybe you can persuade the landlord to refrain from watering the beer until the drought has ended.

  17. Dan Paul
    Pirate

    How do you have a "drought" when it supposedly rains all the time in England?

    First, it seem all your politicians are baldface liars who are in the pay of water companies and environmental activists. The only solution to that type of politician is to send them to prison or death, your choice. Politicians are like Vogons and crap filled diapers, the world will be a better place without them.

    Next, everyone needs one bath or shower per day or society begins to smell. The practice of not bathing or excessive cologne is intolerable and will eventually cause unrest especially in close quarters like subways and offices. England is NOT France!

    Solar or Wind energy is ideal for powering desalinization plants and osmosis is MUCH less expensive now. Astute readers are correct that water has to be pumped to reach your tap and that water could be pumped through osmotic columns using offpeak energy and then up into water towers or reservoirs that are located at higher elevation than the homes they feed and let gravity do much of the work. Filtering the particulate out of the water before osmosis is also very important but strangely enough this process is part of normal water purification so there is no additional energy cost.

    Excess salt water from the osmotic purification process CAN be stored in ponds and evaporated to produce dry salt with sunlight or excess heat from some industrial process. What does a container of sea salt cost in the market? More than enough to help outweigh some of the purification costs I am sure. How about salt used for de-icing roads? Water softeners use salt as well.

    Next, there are many municipalities that use in situ pipe relining to fix water leaks and it does not require digging up the whole length of the street to be installed. However, the people in charge of almost all water systems in the world, have been deliberately delaying pipe maintenance for 40 or more years so the stuff is so decayed that relining can't be done. Who is to blame for that? Not the consumer!

    Bad planning on your part does not constitute and emergency (or added cost) on my part.

  18. Ben 50
    WTF?

    Great Scott...

    http://bos.sagepub.com/content/68/3/13.full.pdf+html

  19. All names Taken
    Paris Hilton

    Well done el Reg!

    Sirs and Madams at el Reg

    My compliments on your skills of discernment and reporting especially the bit about civil servants and politicians.

    These days it appears that politicians are merely the front-faces taking the responsibilities for poor governance while Whitehall remains full of decision makers.

    In short, UK democracy has been turned upside down with Labour merely being mouthpiece for Whitehall mandarins.

    But! There are more civil servants than politicians be that Whitehall versus Commons or Councillors versus Town Hall.

    Not only that but civil servants are paid better than politicians.

    Assuming weight of numbers and salaries awarded are key performance indicators then Whitehall and Town Hall will squash and squish politicians out of the decision taking.

    This means we have two rounds of rubber stamping. One is royalty rubber-stamping the Commons decisions and the other is Commons decisions rubber-stamping Whitehall/Town Hall decisions assuming, of course, that HM Treasury permitted those options in the first place.

    Water? Yes please, may I have a glass full?

  20. AndrueC Silver badge
    IT Angle

    Okay so you desalinate. Ignoring the energy consumption side - what do you do with all the salt?

    1. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
      Happy

      Put it

      on various politicians and watch them shrivel and dry up while leaving a nasty ikky mess

    2. Chemist

      "what do you do with all the salt?"

      It's brine that's higher in salt than the source. Just dump it in the sea - most of the pure water generated is going to end up there fairly quickly so the sea isn't going to get any saltier

    3. squigbobble
      Trollface

      Dump it in the sea. Nobody will notice...

  21. Old Handle
    Thumb Down

    Oh shut up

    Desalinization has been available but seldom used, for ages, and all around the world. Obviously environmentalists are to blame for that, not the fact that it isn't cost effective. Right?

  22. Schultz
    FAIL

    The math is off

    I think the math in this article is far off the mark. Quick browsing of real-world desalination plants indicates a price of 1-2 $ per tonne of water produced. Look here for some scientific cost estimate for water from desalination plants. Surprise news: there is cost beyond building something and purchasing fuel.

    If we talk about cost >>100-200 £ per person, it starts to hurt.

    If you second guess officialdom, please do some research. Else you may loose the pissing contest with your local politicians and look the idiot!

  23. Smudge@mcr

    You may not know..

    ..but in the late 1970's this was predicted in a report presented to the government of the day that London would run out of water by 2010.

    The solution was to build a national grid of water pipes connecting up the then regional water boards.

    Water could then be moved around the country easily from the wet northern areas to the dry south.

    The idea was scrapped by Thatcher as too expensive.

    1. AndrueC Silver badge
      Unhappy

      Re: You may not know..

      She blocked BT's offer to roll FTTP out across the country as well.

      What a cow.

  24. John Savard

    Why?

    I should think that there is an obvious explanation for this.

    The last time most people had even heard of desalination was back when it was used by places like Sa'udi Arabia back when there was no such thing as a modern reverse-osmosis desalination plant. Hence, people tend to think of it as an exotic and specialized option.

    So there's no existing public pressure to keep providing water by that method, and if politicians can continue to keep it a secret, then they're free to avoid other public pressures by not adding to energy use through expanded desalination.

    Of course, boiling seawater with solar mirrors doesn't even have a carbon footprint, but then people would complain about the environmental impact of huge reservoirs.

  25. johnwerneken
    Megaphone

    This is why Government should not be allowed to have laws policies or activities about hardly anything, so that there is no voice of the people or of anyone else either, just business. Government provides defense , justice, stable money, that is it. People get or not the rest as the can. In a rich place, justice (internal peace) is furthered by a reasonable safety net. Once in a while a government may cause a net benefit by investing in research or infrastructure. It is possible internal cohesion and prosperity may be fostered by education vouchers as well.

    But dumb ideas like environmentalism should go no further than the pocketbooks of their believers.

  26. JeffyPooh
    Pint

    Canada has plenty of water, eh?

    So much that we typically just let it run into the oceans. Huge rivers.

    We borrow our household water from about 100m underground, inconvenience it for a few days, and then release it back into the wild (treated). Overall, our household "consumes" no water whatsoever.

    Minor point: +1kWh on 50kWh is +2% or so. That's almost, but not quite insignificant.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You're forgetting the fundamental point. Supply & Demand.

    Limited supply means that they get to charge higher prices equalling more profit. And in today's society it's profit above all else.

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