"Brick" wrote...
Bob Hobden wrote:
"Stan The Man" wrote

On January 18, most of the water companies in the south east will
announce that they are lifting their hosepipe bans. Thames Water,
Southern Water, Three Valleys and Sutton & East Surrey Water will all
lift their hosepipe restrictions in response to the above average
winter rainfall. They join Folkestone & Dover water company which
lifted its ban on October 2.

Gardeners should therefore enjoy a trouble-free watering season since
it must be considered unlikely that the water companies will do an
about-turn once the weather warms up.


They would have a job explaining the continuance of a ban considering the
height and speed of flow of the water in the Thames at the moment.
Not going to take much more rain for it to flood big time around here,
friend nearer the river says it's already 8 inches deep in his basement.

Actually, In that area water is taken largely from underground aquifers,
not rivers. For that to fill up water has to seep through ground and rocks
so the height/flow of rivers is, unfortunately, not entirely relevant.
The problems are getting worse because more building/tarmac means less
rain soaking in, and more running off into rivers. At the same time more
dwellings use more water used.


They always did pump it out of the Thames especially in the winter when the
river was in spate, could it be that because it's expensive to run the pumps
and it then requires a lot of expensive filtering it's cheaper to use the
clean rock/gravel filtered underground water and shout "draught" when it
gets low.
Or am I just being cynical about privatised water companies.

Relatives in Adelaide tell me that since their water went private their
reservoirs are never more than half full whereas before they were always
full going into summer. Local consensus is that the Co. won't pay to pump.
--
Regards
Bob H
17mls W. of London.UK