Water plant that could prevent hose ban ‘secretly mothballed’
Thames Water’s £250m desalination site out of action until next year at earliest despite record summer heat
‘More needs to be done to make sure water companies fix leaks and waste across their networks’
A £250 million water plant built to protect hundreds of thousands of households from the effects of drought has been switched off, The Daily Telegraph has learnt.
As hosepipe bans were imposed on a million more people across the South, Thames Water admitted that a major desalination plant opened by Prince Philip in 2010 will not work until next year at the earliest.
The company assured regulators as recently as January that the plant in Beckton, east London, was ready to go online “for use in drought”, claiming it would provide fresh drinking water for up to 400,000 households every day.
But the Telegraph has learnt that the plant, the only one in the UK designed to turn seawater into fresh water, has in fact been turned off amid questions over whether it has ever been fully operational.
Instead the firm has asked billpayers to stop washing their cars and watering their lawns ahead of an expected hosepipe ban in the capital.
Senior industry sources suggested the plant has been effectively mothballed by Thames Water amid concerns over its high running costs, compared with asking customers to limit use.
Thames Water has raised bills more than 4 per cent this year, with costs for a family home in its area increasing to around £415 a year.
The company made £488million in profits last year. Last night a source at Ofwat, the water regulator, said it would look into Thames Water’s management of the plant during this year’s shortages.
It came as hosepipe and sprinkler bans were imposed on households across Sussex and Kent as water companies blamed the driest July on record.
However, both candidates for the Tory leadership last night vowed to crack down on the water industry, which loses 2.4billion litres of water through leakage daily.
A spokesman for Liz Truss’s campaign said: “We shouldn’t be in a position where hosepipe bans have to happen. More needs to be done to make sure water companies fix leaks and waste across their networks.
“As prime minister, Liz would look at how best Ofwat could hold those water companies with the worst track record to account, so that hard-working people across the country are not restricted on their water use over the summer months.” The spokesman said Ms Truss believed desalination could help shore up water supplies into the future, adding that communities would be given the final say on planning permission.
Rishi Sunak said that he would consider introducing compensation if a hosepipe ban was a direct consequence of the water companies’ failures.
“It is unacceptable for water companies to impose restrictions on their customers when they fail to stem leaks,” Mr Sunak said. “We need tougher financial penalties on the companies that are not investing enough to stop water being wasted.”
Thames Water’s Beckton facility is the only major desalination plant in the UK, but uses technology common in the Middle East and Mediterranean.
The plant was funded by Thames Water billpayers and is run on renewable energy partly sourced from cooking oil used in London restaurants.
Thames Water has already had to revise the proposed output for the plant down by a third, because of “unrealistic expectations” when it was commissioned. The process of desalinating water is energy intensive, making such plants extremely costly to run. The Telegraph understands the plant was built on an estuary rather than out at sea to reduce costs, but this has actually made the plant less stable.
One source said Thames Water’s plant was “a lesson in how not to do it”.
The desalination plant takes briny water from the estuary and processes it to be safe for drinking. It was opened in 2010 amid fears of shortages during the London Olympics.
“Our desalination plant is currently out of service due to necessary planned work,” a spokesman for Thames Water said. “Our teams are working as fast as possible to get it ready for use early next year, if we were to have another dry winter.”
The plant was dogged by opposition from green campaigners from its early stages, and was initially blocked by Ken Livingstone, the former London mayor, who said it was “unnecessary and unsustainable”. It was eventually given the green light when Boris Johnson became mayor in 2008.
Thames Water, which serves 15million people, has said it may be forced to bring in a hosepipe ban after it received just 65 per cent of the average rainfall for the area in the past three months.
In its worst-case planning scenario which would follow a hosepipe ban, customers would be asked to cut their use down to 80-100 litres a day, compared with current average levels of 140 litres.
“The process of desalination carries with it substantial costs both for customers and the environment but bill payers will rightly question what value for money they have seen from the significant investment in this plant,” said Karen Gibbs, from the Consumer Council for Water.
“Thames Water should explain to its customers what active role the plant will play in its wider efforts to safeguard the future of water resources in the region.”
It was opened in 2010 by Prince Philip and was promised to be the saviour for thousands of Londoners in the case of a drought. Twelve years later, the moment arrived during the driest July on record.
But when it came to it, the desalination plant in Beckton, east London, was effectively mothballed with no clear date for its resurrection.
Thames Water has long touted the plant as one of its key measures to protect Londoners in case of a drought, and it has been included in local authorities’ own resilience plans.
But should an official drought hit this year, the plant will not be fired up, as it undergoes what Thames Water says is “necessary planned work”.
There are now questions over whether the plant has ever been fully operational since it was built 12 years ago.
The water industry is already under pressure over its record on leaks, which amount to 2.4 billion litres every day, even as they ask customers to cut down to help the environment.
It now faces yet more criticism that it is asking households to make up for its own failures.
In the absence of the plant, Thames Water will have to lean more heavily on households to reduce their own water consumption.
It has already asked billpayers to let their lawns go brown and their cars stay dirty ahead of an expected hospepipe ban in the capital.
“Bill payers will rightly question what value for money they have seen from the significant investment in this plant,” said Karen Gibbs, from the Consumer Council for Water.
Industry insiders say the company gambled on placing the facility on an estuary, where it hoped to cut operation costs because the seawater, mixed with fresh water from the Thames, would be less salty, and thus less difficult to process.
But they failed to factor in that the water would be at different salinity levels at different times of the day, rendering the plant unreliable for a steady supply of drinking water.
Even once the plant is up and running, it will be producing less drinking water than Thames Water had originally envisaged. The plant was originally intended to produce around 150 million litres of water a day, enough for 900,000 Londoners, but Thames Water was forced to revise the estimate down a third earlier this year.
“This adjustment was made on the basis of experience and to avoid creating unrealistic expectations about the output over a sustained period,” a Thames Water spokesman said.
The impetus for the East London plant had been the London Olympics in 2012, which had prompted concerns that an influx of people during the hot summer months could be disastrous for the city’s water supplies.
But the initial plans proposed in 2004 were blocked by Ken Livingstone, the Labour London mayor at the time, who argued the plant was unsustainable and unnecessary, despite the city being in one the most water-stressed parts of the country.
It was only when Boris Johnson became mayor in 2008 that the plant was given the green light, finally completing construction in 2010.
It is an experience that has been replicated most recently in Hampshire, where Southern Water was forced to drop its plans for a desalination plant last year. The area will be the first in the UK to come under a hosepipe ban starting tomorrow. The plant had been vocally opposed by green groups, most notably the environmentalist Chris Packham, and the local Labour MP Julian Lewis.
South East Water, which became the second water company to announce a hosepipe ban, has included the potential for mobile desalination plants in its long-term plans, but does not intend to introduce them this year.
The Thames Water saga is just the latest in a long-running battle for Britain to develop the desalination technology that is common in hotter and drier countries in the Mediterranean and the Middle East.
The technology, which converts briny water into drinking quality through reverse osmosis, will almost inevitably be needed in the UK as it faces a changing climate, said Martin Currie, who consulted on the project.
“Eventually, there probably will be more desalination plants. Because that’s just the way it will go,” he said.
For water companies, the plants promise a solution to the increasing threat of drought without the need to resort to onerous restrictions that are so unpopular with their customers.
But getting them off the ground can be difficult, with loud opposition from green groups and politicians, who object to the costs and huge energy consumption involved in the process.
“There are a few detailed schemes being proposed,” said Alistair Chisholm from the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management. “But they’re kind of a last resort.”
Critics argue that getting customers to reduce their usage is a cheaper and greener way to tackle the UK’S looming water shortages. Regulators are also wary of giving the green light for projects, over concerns they may add to billpayers’ costs.
Ofwat is understood to be looking into Thames Water’s management of the Beckton plant, as questions were raised over whether it could have eased pressure this summer.
Elsewhere, the plants are uncontroversial. More than 170 countries have some form of desalination plant. .
“They pretty much have no option,” said Mr Chisholm. “The problem with desalination is it’s very energy intensive. And there can be local impacts on ecology, because of the concentration of the effluent.”
But despite their drawbacks, desalination plants could be a vital backup for a drier Britain, which is facing its rivers losing half of their water in the next 30 years. London, with its fast-growing population, is facing the threat of long-running drought within 25 years.
“It’s an emergency measure,” said Mr Chisholm. “And where you’ve got particularly water-stressed areas, there’s obviously going to be more of a case for building that kind of kit.”