More Than Living

If it’s impossible to waste water, why do we need more reservoirs?

“Water is not a finite resource,” A.A.Gill recently declared in a ram­bling res­taur­ant review. “It isn’t a van­ish­ing com­mod­ity; if you leave the tap run­ning, it doesn’t vanish forever. Don’t let any­body tell you that you’re wast­ing it: you can’t.”

Indeed, if we’re going to be pedantic about it, he’s true. After ful­filling our house­hold needs, water is flushed out to even­tu­ally rejoin the pre­cip­it­a­tion cycle, form rain and replen­ish our reservoirs.

But it’s the point that Gill dis­misses with an after­thought – “you may be wast­ing the energy that brought it to you” – that must form the basis of argu­ments about water waste.

Whether dirty or unused, the water most of us flush away will be mixed with sewage and make its way through energy-​​intensive treat­ment plants, which are also alleged to pump toxic waste into the sea.

And the demand for fresh water has ser­i­ous phys­ical con­sequences for the envir­on­ment. Take Brighton & Hove, for example. With 250,000 people (double this at the week­end) and only a hand­ful of reser­voirs provid­ing the city’s fresh water, engin­eers will tell you there is most cer­tainly a finite resource.

The aquifers that feed the world’s reser­voirs are drying up, a phe­nomenon attrib­uted to the effect of cli­mate change on global weather pat­terns. And in order to com­pensate for the loss of water supply and water wastage, caused in part by leaks – it’s repor­ted that 63 mil­lion litres of water a day escapes from South East Water pipes - we may be about to sac­ri­fice a national beauty spot.

Between Sussex’s South Downs and Ash­down Forest, the 500 acres of Plash­ett Park farm may soon be under­wa­ter if South East Water receives gov­ern­ment approval to use the area for a reservoir.

Not only would this result in the loss of three gen­er­a­tions’ worth of work, the live­li­hood of those who cur­rently work the farm and a local sup­plier of food, but also an area of spe­cial sci­entific interest. Old oaks and cor­ridors of hedgerows and shrubs in the park provide homes for a vari­ety of wild­life, includ­ing one of Britain’s rarest mam­mals, the Bechstein’s bat.

But all this may soon be his­tory, as should be the belief that it’s not pos­sible to waste water.

IMAGE by Flickr user

Noah Bulgaria

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Ori­gin­ally posted 2008-​​05-​​23 20:02:00. Repub­lished by Blog Post Promoter

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