Londoners must stop seeing water as ‘infinitely available resource’

Londoners must stop seeing water as an “infinitely available resource” as population growth, ageing infrastructure and declining rainfall make the capital increasingly vulnerable to drought.

Alex Nickson, water resources manager at Thames Water, said low prices and frequent wet weather have created the false impression among customers that supplies are plentiful.

Nickson was commenting on the publication of the first London City Resilience Strategy which features Thames Water as a partner on two actions.

The game plan was unveiled by the Mayor of London’s office as part of the global 100 Resilient Cities Project to highlight “new threats to the city’s safety and stability, including the impact of climate change and extreme weather events that lead to flooding and drought”.

Nickson said water efficiency messages are not at the forefront of most customers’ minds.

“It’s a product that initially falls from the sky,” he remarked. “A lot of people think it just magically arrives at the tap in the high quality that it does, and magically goes away again.

“We’ve not had a serious drought since 1976 and there’s no recent memory of the concept of lack of water. Together with the low price means it just isn’t in most people’s minds.”

He said customers should reasonably expect high levels of service in all but “the most extreme conditions”, but said the downside is “people assume it is an infinitely available resource.”

The resilience plan outlines the need for investment in infrastructure and grey water technologies coupled with water efficiency messages in times of drought.

Nickson said grey and rainwater harvesting systems are now being deployed by developers but need to become mainstream: “We don’t think you need to purify to the highest quality in Europe, every drop of water. If you’re going to flush your loo with it or wash your clothes with it, it doesn’t need to be drinking quality standard.”

“We are looking at the barriers to adopting it, what are the myths and what is the business case to drive rainwater harvesting because it would take the pressures off of the reserves.”

He said these concerns include costs, maintenance and ensuring drinking is not affected.

To assist customers with reducing their consumption, Thames and other water companies offer home visits that link water efficiency to energy efficiency.

Nickson said it talks to customers with newly installed water meters in terms of energy savings because household energy bills include the cost of heating water: “If customers can be more water efficient then they will be more energy efficient and the energy savings are considerably more than the water savings.”

He said the company compiles the messages together in smarter home visits. “We talk with customers about how they use water in their household and then offer advice and measures to reduce their water and energy efficiency.

“We are getting an ever more positive response to this – whether that’s linked to the climate emergency or anything else, it’s all good stuff because people are warming to the concept of being water conscious.”

The resilience strategy includes a case study of Cape Town’s Day Zero, which Nickson described as “a sanguine lesson for a number of other major world cities” and a situation that was very closely followed but “very, very, very unlikely” to happen in London or other UK cities.

“You’ve always got to prepare for the very worst, even though you hope it will never happen. The companies in the south were very interested in Cape Town because if this had been a very dry winter we would have started next year in a very difficult position – nowhere near Cape Town but the lesson showed many cities that what you thought was unthinkable is possible.”

The lesson can be applied to any densely populated town or city and Nickson said the need to save water is present not only in times of drought.

“The combination of climate change population growth, and the need to leave more water and environment so we can have a better environment combine to quite a scary prospect,” he warned. “There is only so much water in the environment and, it can be infinitely recycled, but we need invest to do that and our customers need to be efficient with it.”