JOIN THE PHEW
PARCHED families queued in the baking sunshine for emergency drinking water yesterday as taps ran dry in hundreds of homes.
As drought grips parts of England, hundreds of residents were left with no running water after a fault took out a treatment plant.
Householders in Cranleigh, Dorking and Horsham told how rations of two two-litre bottles were being handed out per person following the fault at Thames Water’s Netley Mill Treatment Works in Surrey.
RESTRICTIONS
Supermarket shelves were emptied as residents panic-bought extra supplies, while Manor Farm in Wotton warned cows could “try to break out of fields” in search of water if the issue was not resolved quickly.
Former Chelsea and England footballer Graeme Le Saux also hit out at South West Surrey MP Jeremy Hunt for a “PR stunt” after he posed for a photo with Thames Water boss Sarah Bentley.
The footie ace, who lives in the area, tweeted: “There’s no bottled water at pick up points, they’ve run out.”
Thames Water said engineers were “making progress” towards fixing technical issues at its
Netley Mill works.
The chaos came after a drought was declared in eight of England’s 14 water regions on Friday. Restrictions could last into next year after southern England recorded its driest July since 1835, with too little rain forecast to replenish supplies.
However, some parts of the
UK are finally due rain this week – with yellow thunderstorm warnings replacing amber heat alerts.
The warnings are in place today from 10am until midnight for Wales and England, and from noon today until 6am on Monday for most of Scotland and Northern Ireland.
But the parched ground also means
England could see flash flooding from Monday, as rain struggles to soak in.
Dr Helen Griffith, environmental hazards researcher at Reading University, said the rainfall will be too little too late to drag Britain out of drought.
She warned: “Drought doesn’t happen overnight. It takes months of below average rain. One week of storms will
not make a meaningful difference. The heavy rain will also not be able to permeate the baked earth to make it into groundwater and, ultimately, our reservoirs.”
Experts have warned that droughts will become more frequent in future due to the effects of climate change.
Dr Griffith added: “Water will be a new currency. We’ll also see a real west-to-east divide in the country about who has the water resources, with the west having far more rainfall.
“Consumers, the Government and water firms alike need to be more conscious of it as a finite resource.”
The GMB Union, which represents water industry workers, has criticised water bosses across the country for not investing enough in infrastructure and reservoirs.
Spokesman Andy Prendergast said: “We’re seeing companies reduce money they put into research and developing infrastructure while they put huge amounts into profits and shareholder dividends.” But a senior industry source said plans for reservoirs and water transport systems were often rejected due to local opposition.
The insider said: “They’ve always been reluctant to push ahead. The way the climate is changing, we’re not going to get too many second chances.”
Shadow Environment Secretary Jim McMahon said: “This crisis in our system was predictable. The Government and water firms should have planned for it, not rely on hosepipe bans to get us through.”