You don’t need me to tell you how hot it is out there, the plants (and weeds) are lapping up the sunshine, gardens are bursting into colour and everywhere is looking very green…at the moment. But with the current prolonged period of unusually hot weather this may soon change as the strain on our water supply is beginning to take its toll.
Rye News covered the problems with burst pipes recently (Wat-er disaster) when large areas of the county had no water but it seems that we are all using a lot more water in this excessive heat and our supplier, South East Water has started issuing warning messages, like the one below issued on Monday.
Good afternoon,
Due to temperatures soaring across our region in recent days and the prolonged dry weather we’ve experienced for the last six weeks we’re having to pump much more drinking water to customer taps than normal.
This, coupled with not seeing any significant rainfall since the end of April has put considerable pressure on our ability treat, pump and supply water to our all customers.
Demand has been rising over the last few weeks, but over the weekend we treated and pumped enough water to supply an additional four towns the size of Maidstone or Eastbourne.
This has impacted on the amount of treated water we have in our drinking water storage tanks across the regions.
We’re asking for our customers to commit to only using water that’s needed for essentials – things like drinking, cooking and hygiene. If we can all do that for the next few days, we will be able to refill the network much faster.”
Gardens and the surrounding countryside are relishing in all this sunshine, lush and with new growth but it seems that we could be moving closer to scenes of last year’s drought conditions if we don’t start conserving and prioritising our use of water. At the moment, keeping plants watered is not a current priority and a much needed downfall would refill our empty water barrels.
According to South East Water’s website there are water supply issues in Wadhurst, Mayfield, Tunbridge Wells, Biddenden and Staplehurst. No doubt at some point the heavens will open again but until then, watering the gardens may have to wait.
Live update 16 June.
For those whose water is supplied by South East Water, they have just made the following announcement.
A hosepipe and sprinkler ban is being imposed on people in Kent and Sussex.
South East Water said it had no choice after demand for drinking water had reached “record levels” in June, similar to last year’s drought.Some households in Kent and Sussex have been without water since Monday due to supply issues.
It will impose the ban on hosepipes from 26 June, the measures mean that using hosepipes and sprinklers to water gardens, clean cars and fill swimming pools will not be allowed, and rule-breakers could be hit with a £1,000 fine.
Image Credits: Santeri Viinamaki , Nick Forman .
Maybe reinvesting their huge profits back into the system instead of massive bonuses to themselves and payments to shareholders might help, meanwhile we at the bottom of the food chain will suffer…and did I mention sewage!
I cannot be alone in trying to report the water which has been running down the road outside the Playden Oasts to my knowledge for several days. Upon ringing Southern Water’s “Leak Line”, (0800 820 999) it was answered by someone with a very limited understanding of the English language and who was unable to accept the name of the restaurant as the nearest location to the leak. On ringing another number today the person dealt swiftly with this and rang me later to confirm that an engineer would be at the site of the fault within 2 hours. We shall see.
10 days notice to ban hoses seems ridiculous, how much water can you waste filling swimming pools and watering flowers in ten days.
If they need to save water today then ban it from today.
I’m sure there will be some logical reason but it sounds like the usual authoritarian routine much the same as banning flights in seven days to stop Covid and going into lock down next week to save lives.
Back in the drought last year I reported a leak in the layby oposite my house with water trickling down the Rye road at Bowlers Town.
South East Water arrived to repair the leak on March the sixth this year!
That repair lasted all of three months.
The leak reappeared two weeks ago and they are currently in the process of fixing it again.
Why can’t the utilities companies do a job properly the first time?
Asking service users to accept a hosepipe ban is the same as asking patients to tolerate hours waiting in corridors on hospital trolleys so that the status quo can lumber on, serving those at the pinnacle and short changing everybody else. It’s about choices. There always seems to be money for weapons and wars, money for dividends, money for Coronations (dare I say), money for contracts to VIP Lane carpet-baggers… But everyone else has to be patient… Has to think about inflation, has to think about ‘the magic money tree’… It’s ‘jam tomorrow’ and distant ‘sunlit uplands’ for everyone else.
Southern Water were reckoned to be losing 88 million litres of water A DAY (!) last year through leaks. So, it’s not surprising there’s a need to ration supply – and this is rationing, of course. I wonder though, whether the conduits funnelling profits to the international investment companies that own 90% of English water companies are as unreliable as our water infrastructure? I imagine that flow is fairly dependable! OK, that’s a pretty cheap critique, but it’s just an illustration that things evidently need to change radically. Privatisation was supposed to introduce efficiency, dependability and cutting edge modernity but that is not what we experience as consumers. These old assumptions are proving to be flawed. It’s part of a much bigger need for change in the way our country works, and personally, I think it all stems from the way our electoral system distorts and concentrates power.
As a parting thought, ironically, Wadhurst, the vaunted “Best Place to Live in the UK” currently has a lot in common with Sadr City, the mega-slum in Baghdad – You can’t get water out of a tap in either locale… Time for change?