The race to stop England running out of water

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyrv84yd9ko

One evening in early August, farmer Daniel Sizer's phone buzzed with a message.

It was from his local water board and it read: "River levels are low but have recovered enough to allow one night of irrigation tonight."

Like much of the lower half of England, Daniel's fourth-generation farm had seen barely any rain in nearly three months.

26 points · 6 comments · view on lemmy.world

6 Comments

tetris11@feddit.uk · 12 pts · 13d (3 replies)

"We've actually doubled the amount of water we use per person, on average, in the last 50, 60 years,"

Averages are meaningless if a handful of whales are using far more than the median

This groundwater provides about one third of the public water supplies in England, and for some regions as much as 100%. They are vital sources of water supply to rivers, which are the first to struggle in summer droughts, and could be another solution to water shortages.

Let's please not follow Tehran and completely deplete our aquifiers within a decade. Let's just build reservoirs

Tweak@feddit.uk · 4 pts · 11d

Averages are meaningless if a handful of whales are using far more than the median

I bet they've done some bullshit like assign the water used by companies that produce bottled water to individual end users.

Elting@piefed.social · 4 pts · 12d (1 reply)

Usually its deep rooted plants that restore water to aquifers. The kind of deep rooted plants that cant grow in mowed fields and farmed land.

tetris11@feddit.uk · 3 pts · 12d

Rewilding seems to be a growing trend in the UK which is promising, and should hopefully encourage more deep rooted plants

lemmelemmy@feddit.org · 7 pts · 13d

JUST BUILD DAMS FFS.

Idk how easy the solution is but still no action taken. After one winter and the dams would be fucking filled to top. It should be a crime not to have dams in such a rainy country. Believe it or not but it can even lower the need of food import. But oh no some one needs their fifth Bugatti. Ffs this is all because privatisation.

For fucks sake, a water distribution company shouldn’t profit to a CEO. That money should directly funnel to infrastructure improvement instead someone else’s yatch.

UK country needs a fucking revolution and destroy the private schools, dethrone offshore billionaires and monarchy.

it_depends_man@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 13d

However, more than 45 litres per person per day is still being lost from England's water network, nearly a fifth of all the water in the system.

What the actual...

Good luck dealing with it over all.