Water companies must commit to better planning and investment if the UK is to cope with prolonged dry spells and drought conditions in the future.
Throughout June, July and August the average temperature across Great Britain rested at 16.5C. This is the hottest since records began in 1984 and beats the previous all-time high, set just 12 months earlier.
As a result of extended periods without rain and more intense evaporation, reservoir supplies are currently down 18% on historic levels for this time of year. However, some sites are faring significantly worse than others. At Wimbleball and Clatworthy in Somerset, storage is currently 37% and 40% respectively, Ardingley in West Sussex has a 44% deficit and Hanningfield in Essex has dropped by 49%.
‘The weather this summer looks less like an anomaly and more like the new normal,’ said Allan Owen, Infrastructure Projects Partner at the Met Office, who advises on nationally significant transactions in the water sector. ‘Drought planning can only take us so far, particularly where increasing levels of abstraction risks further damage to already stressed river ecosystem.
‘The bigger threat is the cumulative effect of repeated drought years with the potential that water supply systems won’t be able to ‘bounce back’ over the winter months,’ he continued. ‘The water sector is responding through increased water trading backed by a multi-billion-pound pipeline of enabling infrastructure being advanced through RAPID including reservoirs, treatment plants, and transfer pipelines, but major infrastructure cannot be commissioned overnight. The uncomfortable reality is that the effects of climate challenge are arriving faster than the additional water resources needed to address it.’
Image: Sasikan Ulevik / Unsplash
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