HighPressure

Incredible M25-M26 corridor, lightening, hail, rain showing purple on the map 100mm p/hr. Horrendous conditions for motorway drivers.

Just to the north of Tunbridge Wells and South of London, it looks like its M25 - M26 corridor?

The Southern leg of the M25 Surrey into Kent has just seen one all mighty storm, we were under purple (rain map) @100mm p/hr a little while ago. Hail, lightening and I actually ran out of the conservatory because I thought the roof would come in. The weather warnings have this stuff further south across Sussex? Some of these clouds look mighty mean and I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere has hard mini tornadoes? Yes Maidstone its coming right at you!

I would interested to know whether or not a technical drought still exists? Given the amount of rain we have had we must be catching up what could be termed a non-drought situation?

Worth keeping a eye on: http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/homeandleisure/floods/34678.aspx?page=1&type=Region&term=Southeast&from=fl

Chicken feed, just over 1 minutes production for Thames and just a little baby burst. Honestly the media are terrible for this sort of thing and I am one of Thames Waters biggest critics. Its not easy isolating a burst main when the road is underwater - how do you find the valves ???

BBC Sout East News reporting tonight that Southern Water will be lifting restrictions shortly. I expect over companies to follow suit eventually. As I have said previously there is now no need for wholesale resrictions if any at all. There maybe pockets within areas that rely on groundwater supplies and some small companie such as Sutton & East Surrey where they could make an argunment for continued restrictions but the majority need to be lifted.

Given the continued rain, and reservoirs near normal water levels throughout the south including Bewl Water now at @75% I expect drought orders to steadily be lifted across the south and East. Although groundwater levels are still low they will improve throughout May leading to no need for restrictions in even these areas or though a few pockets of restrictions may remain such as NW Kent which rely extensively on groundwater.

I think the focus should be whether a drought of the current nature should lead to the meltdown of water supplies and in turn if that should be acceptable? Having worked in the industry for nearly 20yrs I strongly believe that it is totally unacceptable that a company which cannot supply it's product can continue to take payment for it? The companies have taken 10 of billions out in profits and will continue to do so unless stronger regulation is put in place. With restrictions in place it is quite possible that firms such as Thames will see profits rise due to lower operating costs. Like all businesses water companies work on risk factor analysis when formulating it's business and investment plan. What we are seeing now is probably only a a 1 in 10 occurrence yet it is not factored into the investment plan. The question has to be why that is? The answer is that it doesn't need to be because there is no competition or regulation to force that to happen, and no business is going to spend money it doesn't need too. One problem picked up in the press is the sell off of assets by the companies since privatization and it's pretty hard to defend. Thames actually sold an entire water works at Surbiton for multi millions stating it was no longer required, and so the story goes on.

Yep going around in circles now, perhaps the question is should we need water restrictions with the amount of water available to us, even in what is a technical drought? I dont think this drought is a argument for restrictions?

I do like this idea When you start sending out tankers and I have, you realize just how many of them you need. It's a good way of quantifying how much water is used. The average water tanker is half the size of a petrol tanker and can hold @20,000ltrs, in order to as you say put water into the ground (known as artificial recharge) you need a minimum of say 2mld that's is 2,000,000ltrs a day which equals 4 tankers every hour of the day. That is only for one small aquifer, and experiments carried out does not sugges it is in anyway efficient. Not to mention the environmental impact of the road traffic. To put that into perspective 200,000,000ltrs is roughly what Thames water Kent wells produce each day, that is 100 times the above, that's 10,000 tankers a day to supply 10% of London's daily usage. And to say better than a pipe, when the 60" main I famously burst in 1999 putting Hanger Lang under 30ft of water was carrying 250mld at the time. I don't think people really understand the quantities involved?

What facts are you looking for? What about after the 1989 water shortages, Thames Water promised it would not impose restrictions again in the next 10 years as they had learnt from their mistakes? They stuck to that promise through thick and thin denying all calls from within to impose restrictions, not because they were not needed but because it would effect their K factor and share price. I don't have a data bank memory but I do remember very low river and ground water levels leading up to 1995 which also had a dry summer. We suffered to get surface reservoirs up in the Spring to anywhere near the Levels London are showing now, we probably only made about 80% which is bad. The Thames was was suffering from very low flows which just added to the problem meaning we were taking everything she had to give to the extent we had tilted house boats. We had problems getting water into the works due to low head levels of storage reservoirs by about July as we were below 50% in them and as I said before they don't meet demand below 50%. Despite all this we had no restrictions in place? I don't have a in-depth knowledge of all water companies, but I can say without a problem that Thames are trying it on. The issue with low Boreholes levels in Kent could have been solved with a project to up rate transfer from West London but it was never done. The simple fact is that due to shortfalls in the system Thames could start on 100% full and good ground water levels and still end up in trouble if there is a sustained dry summer period.

As predicted the position in the south for reservoirs is a rapidly improving one, the often quoted Bewl Water should be @65% by Tuesday with 70+% looking easily achievable. Thames London reservoirs stand at 98% while their Farmoor reservoir in Oxford is 97%. Ground water levels are still low but improving and they will continue to do due to the lag in rainfall and water reaching the water table. Yes it's not a fantastic position, but given some of the levels I have seen particularly in the 90s when wholesale restrictions were not put in place I see no reason for them to be in operation now?

What is drought? Simple enough question but not easy to answer. A period of just 15 days without rainfall can be considered a drought in the UK whereas it is 2 years in Lybia. We are suffering the perceived lack of water supplies should lower then average rainfall occur over an extended non defined period of time? Average rainfall is the measure by which water companies design and run their systems. I would argue that drought in our current state means a system shortfall rather then a water deficiency. I would further pose the question that if the will existed and the money spent that it would be impossible for water shortages to exist at all anywhere in the UK in any of our life times.

I have not been back on this thread since the drought orders were imposed, I would bet money on a deluge the day after they came into force. Its difficult to generalise as different areas collect water in different ways and combinations of different ways. River abstracted reservoirs in the London area are full and were before any drought orders. Many surface collection reservoirs will now be getting a good fill rate and I guess some will get close to more normal levels, but there will certainly be a vastly improved picture now compared to the beginning of the month. The main problem area will still surround ground water levels which have been very low especially in the south. Water can and will still make it's way into the water table in April but I would be surprised if this makes a major difference as most of the rainfall will be runoff. The ground dries very quickly this time of year, I think within 30 mins if the rain stopping today the path and roads near me were dry. I agree in sorts to what Village is saying, there is no drought, what there is, is a poor distribution network and a number of companies using a hosepipe ban as a smokescreen to hide their own investment and infrastructure short comings. There is always enough rainfall in the UK to sustain water supplies to everyone, and we are on a Island with several thousand miles if shoreline.

Hurricanes are interesting but that is not say I want to be in one, although I know some here would love to be? I just question their sanity

Here on the Kent/Surret border it's been raining all day, so much for the light showers forecast? it is currently raining moderately to heavy and there appears no let up until post lunchtime tommorrow. We could see 2 inches out of this over the 2 days. Bloody horrible and anyone who likes this must be completely insane. Forgot to say winds now getting up as well.

Thanks for your post, the TW artificial recharge system was setup sometime in the mid nineties, they are a series of boreholes next to the river Lee, I have actually run them. They never worked properly, were hydraulically and system flawed, the most we ever put down them was 0.5 -1.0 mld. If memory serves me right we had about 10 of these useless recharge boreholes. The DeSal plant supplies water to that area. I see Kent and areas around the River Dareth as being a major problem area.

The ground acts like a sponge and like a sponge it needs to have a certain moisture level before water will flow, this is measured by what is known as soil moisture deficit. I believe I am right in saying that until there is no deficit there will be no flow. So the rain that fell at the weekend will just have reduced deficits, of the rest as said a lot will have evaporated and remainder will have entered watercourses via runoff. It genuinely takes a good couple of days for rivers to see peek flow following rain but it will not be very much. I think it's now too later for any meaningful groundwater recharge, surface water levels and flows will suffer as a result unless we see regular rain through spring and summer.

These were just plans when I left TW but if memory serves me right, its purpose is to supply the Woodford service reservoir which normally gets it's water from the Lee valley. We always had a problem supporting that area from the Thames Valley due to network and hydraulic restrictions rather then overal supply issues. Initially it was turned down by Ken and probably only got the green light due to the Olympics more then any other reason. It's interesting that the water wasn't sent south to support the Kent Wells which is the main area of concern during drought. The other thing people may not know is that TW had a works capable of 120mld which was shut down and sold for develpment @1995 which they stated was no longer required. The works was at Surbiton now a supermarket? The question I ask is why allow a Company who cannot guarentee supplies to take @£6 billion in profits over the past 10 years when securing supplies would cost no more then @2 billion if that? Another thing about the DeSal plant why hasn't it been running over the winter, that's 150mld of water that could have been produced for the last 6 months? Reason is it's too expensive to run, they have the capacity to artificially recharge aquifers and maybe they should be asked what they have been doing in this direction over winter?

For anyone wanting to keep an in depth eye on things I suggest the EA water situation reports updated weekly: http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/research/library/publications/33995.aspx Having looked at the overall situation, groundwater levels are very low in the SE, but London area surface reservoirs are well on course to be 100% full ahead of last year. Although River flows are down surface reservoir refill rates suggest that the river flow has not exactly been on its knees over the winter? I am not all convinced the bulk of London needs water restrictions at this stage? The surface reservoirs and river Thames flows have been worse on many occasions since 1976. I think Thames are just covering up the inadequacies of their network by jumping on the bandwagon.

Fantatic day on the north downs not a cloud in the sky and sitting in my conservatory the temp is about 80c mid teens outside, no wind and pretty much the perfect day.

Yep I think technically it's the easiest solution but you are stretching it a bit with 150ml/d will supply a million as its closet to 600-700,000 with per capita usage at @200ltrs per day. It's still a very expensive way to produce water and not particularly environment friendly. Most of the very big plants use MSF method I believe? The UK is a revese osmosis plant for 150 ml/d is large.

The desalination plant at Beckon was being talked about when I was with TW, with a max output of 150ml/d @6% of max London demand it is not really going to have much of a impact. They are very expensive to run, which why it is only designed as a contingency. Thames ideally could do with @4 more at the cost of say a billion quid plus running costs to actually give London a robust water supply system. Engineering wise it's possible but commercially unlikely. The canal idea has been talked about for years, but there are so many technical problems to overcome plus the huge expense, it's not something that I think will ever be done. I am not sure if many people have actually given the idea of hundreds of millions of litres of water traveling down a narrow canal a lot of thought? Leakage in London is always going to be problem but as I said in another post TW were forced to spend quite a bit of money reducing it about 10yrs ago and did make some ground. One main area of water loss is the raw water storage reservoir system which is not calculated in leakage figures because it never reaches the works. I did this calc back in 2004 and could not account for where about 20,000 million litres of abstracted water each year, that the entire contents of one of the big reservoirs near Heathrow.

A dry March will ensure low ground water levels where they are already so, pretty much regardless of what happens in the Spring. As pointed to above once we get into Spring then most of the rain that falls either finds it's way into the rivers by runoff or is evaporated. The jury is still out on those who rely on reservoirs for their supply as there is still a little time. From my experience summer river levels certainly in the S a E will be low because of groundwater levels. Abstraction from rivers depends on some degree of groundwater flow in the summer and if low levels/flows are twined with a dry Spring/summer then we could find ourselves back in a 1976 situation.