London told ‘prepare for water rationing’ as streams dry up

Londoners are facing the ‘imminent’ prospect of water rationing because of over-abstraction, over-use and leaking pipes.

James Wallace, chief executive of River Action, warned the chalk streams that provide the capital with drinking water were at risk of drying up.

‘When we look at water security, look at the Chilterns. The Chilterns feed North London,’ the environmentalist told a meeting with the Greater London Authority (GLA).

‘Now many streams are permanently dry, and some are only 25% of normal flow rates. This means we are going to be seeing rationing of water in North London imminently. We’re not talking 20, 30, 40 years, we’re talking imminently.

‘When are we going to treat this like it’s an emergency? I appreciate it takes time to dig a reservoir but some of these things, like changing our abstraction requirements, reducing consumer demand, fixing leaky pipes, this is a national crisis, and we need to address it that way.’

Thames Water said it is losing 602.2 million litres a day through leaks in its annual report published last week.

The utility giant also revealed its mountain of debt had reached £14billion, pushing it to the brink of collapse.

Interim chief executive Cathryn Ross said the Government’s Plan For Water – which aims to reduce leakages by half by 2050 – did not go far enough.

In answer to a question about managing water resources, she told the GLA: ‘Yes, there is more we need to do.

‘But we actually need to change our national conversation about water, we need to change how we think about water.

‘We need to understand, for example, that London has more or less the same rainfall as Jerusalem and we’re not living in a wet country where we can take water for granted.’

Thames Water, which is the UK’s largest water company serving 15 million people, wants to build a new 150-billion-litre reservoir in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, but has faced local opposition.

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