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Originally Posted by Stan The Man
(me):If you look at detailed local rainfall data for last winter, you will observe that the Chilterns was not as starved of rainfall as most otherSE areas - 75% rather than the 50% in parts of Surrey/Sussex/Kent.
(you):According to the Met Office the south east (actually called England South East and South) had above average rainfall in October, February and March - and it will again be above average for May. April's
rainfall was 94% of the long term average (for the whole region but
Thames are claiming less than 60% in their supply area so the rest of
the region must have been well over 100%). So, since the beginning of
the year, only January was dry, albeit it was very dry. Otherwise this
has been a period of sustained rainfall -- and more importantly for the
aquifers, the temperatire has been well below average at the same time,
thus ensuring that record low amounts of water were lost to evaporation
and/or growing flora/transpiration. Even if we accept that the
situation until January was bad with a long period of below average
rainfall in the region - one or two months excepted - it isn't
believable that the rainfall since January hasn't ended the drought
threat, especially as it has been assisted by the temperatures.
[other good stuff snipped]
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Agreed. The 50%/75% (which I am remembering to the nearest 25%) figures were 14 months to end Feb 06. But the Misbourne is still empty, which is the first time in 15 years, so I guess the aquifers must be very low. To the extent that the recent good late winter rainfall is refreshing the aquifers, it won't actually get into those aquifers for 6-18 months depending upon the aquifer.
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But surely we're *already* paying for the lack of leakage control, in
that we still have to pay the water companies (Wessex Water, in my
case) for providing water that never reaches us (about 25% of the WW
supply is leaked, I believe).
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Yes, but that is far, far cheaper than fixing the leaks. You may pay about £1 per cubic metre for metered water, but that covers mainly the fixed costs of providing the service: the unit operating cost of losing a cubic metre of water is in the order of 1% to 5% of that. If you had a choice between £1.05 for 2 kg of sugar with a hole in the bag so that you only got 1kg home, or £2 for 1 kg of sugar with no hole in the bag, which would you choose?