As outlined in part one of this article, England faces a substantial challenge in securing enough water for the future. Water.org states that, without further action, public water supplies could face a shortfall of 5 billion litres of water a day by 2050. That is the equivalent of almost 4.5 Wembley Stadiums of water every day. Where is it coming from, and where is it going to be stored and treated before it is fit for human consumption?
Water companies are planning around ten new reservoirs and storage facilities across England – including Havant Thicket in Hampshire, the first major reservoir built in Britain in over thirty years, along with schemes in the Fens, Kent, Oxfordshire, Lincolnshire, Somerset, Suffolk, Sussex and the West Midlands. Between them, the published figures suggest a planned additional capacity of some 390 million cubic metres.
New reservoirs alone are not enough
While the new facilities will provide additional resilience, it is important to distinguish between a reservoir’s storage capacity and the amount of water it can reliably supply each day.
Storage capacity is measured in cubic metres, whereas deployable supply is generally expressed in megalitres (millions of litres) per day. The government predict that the planned new reservoirs will be able to deliver an additional 711 megalitres per day by 2050. This alone is clearly not sufficient to meet the predicted daily shortfall of 5 billion litres (5000 megalitres) being less than 15% of what’s necessary.
Raindrops keep falling on our heads (we hope)
There is one fundamental assumption being made for all this to work: that the rain falling from the sky is going to continue at a rate that enables the water to be processed, supplied and consumed at this new level of demand. With the rapid onset of climate change, this is a very big assumption to make.
The Environment Agency expects warmer, wetter winters and hotter, drier summers, increasing pressure on water supplies at precisely the time when demand is likely to be highest. More storage can capture water when it is available and carry it through dry periods. But a reservoir cannot create water, its reliability ultimately depends on its source being replenished.
Without sufficient rain to replenish reservoirs and meet anticipated demand, we are no further forward, and a great deal of money will have gone somewhere other than where it was intended. One thought worth bearing in mind for those who argue for renationalising water is who would carry these risks? The ovvious answer is the taxpayer, with government pouring money into a resource under exactly the same pressures, but now underwritten by the public purse.
The other end of the issue
This article doesn’t consider the additional need for upgraded sewage treatment on the output side, and the investment required for the increased wastewater passing through the system as demand rises.It is equally essential to ensure clean water re-enters the hydrological cycle and there is adequate capability to manage sewage during flooding, which is not the case at present.
Future population growth and increased water consumption therefore create a second infrastructure requirement alongside the new reservoirs and other sources of supply. New water entering the system must eventually leave it as wastewater, and that wastewater must be transported, treated and safely returned to the environment.
We need to pull out all the stops
New reservoirs alone aren’t going to solve the problem. The solution will have to include demand reduction, leakage reduction, transfers between regions, water recycling, desalination and other schemes.
The latest national framework shows how important demand management will be. Under its central scenario, which assumes planned supply schemes are delivered and national demand-reduction targets are achieved, England could have a small overall surplus by 2055. Under a more pessimistic ‘do nothing’ scenario, the deficit would still be 4.37 billion litres a day, even after the actions already planned for 2025-30 were delivered.
This illustrates the scale of the uncertainty. The question is not simply how many reservoirs are built, but whether the entire package of measures is delivered.
Are desalination plants a realistic part of the solution?
Desalination could provide another source, particularly in coastal areas. However, there are significant hurdles to overcome. England’s best known plant is Thames Water’s Beckton facility in East London, which treats brackish water from the Thames using reverse osmosis.
Built for around £500mn, the plant has a troubled history. Recent reports say it has only run five times since opening in 2011. Thames Water plans to restart the plant by the end of 2026, but that will come too late to address the current drought and is intended mainly to replenish reservoirs for next summer. Its high energy costs, ageing membranes, and poor financial returns have made it a controversial ‘white elephant’ and perhaps not a great model for addressing the UK’s water shortfall. Nevertheless, it has one major advantage: unlike reservoirs, it is not directly dependent on rainfall.
The New Civil Engineer reports plans for six further desalination plants – five in practice, once Sizewell C, which is for construction activities only, is excluded.
The infrastructure challenge
The size of the investment and timescales involved are considerable. New reservoirs and other major schemes require planning permission, environmental assessment, abstraction licences, construction and associated treatment and distribution infrastructure.
They also need to be delivered before the projected shortages become critical.
There is another issue that deserves greater attention: the quality and consistency of publicly available data. Water companies do not always describe the capacity of their schemes in the same way, making comparisons unnecessarily difficult. A consistent national format would make it easier to understand how individual projects contribute to the overall supply-demand balance.
The government’s framework recognises this problem and calls for more consistent data and joined-up planning across water companies, regions and other sectors.
So, will there be enough water?
At present, the answer to that question is a resounding “no”. It is too early to conclude that England will definitely run out of water by 2050, but, equally, there is no basis for assuming that the problem will resolve itself. The government has woken up to this fact and the need to ensure there will be enough water. They have recognised the scale of the challenge and have a strategy involving new supplies, demand reduction and better management of existing resources. The latest modelling shows that this can work under its central assumptions.
But it all depends on major infrastructure being delivered, leakage and consumption being reduced, environmental requirements being accommodated and water resources remaining sufficiently reliable as the climate changes.
There is therefore no single solution. Reservoirs will be needed, but so will water efficiency, leakage reduction, transfers, recycling and ,potentially, desalination.
The central question is whether all these measures can be delivered quickly enough, at sufficient scale and with enough resilience to cope with a changing climate.
More from Patrick Wright
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