Re: Hosepipe bans
"losing almost a quarter of the water it supplies".
Though, pedantically, it doesn't lose a quarter of the water it supplies, since the water is not delivered to the customer, and therefore isn't strictly supplied.
Also, while everyone likes to talk about water being lost, no one ever considers what happens to it.
While there are the rare occurrences of mains bursts that create holes in roads and flood properties, with the water then going into the surface water drainage system, most leakage seems to be true leaks from the supply pipes. Thus, most lost water is actually returned to the ground, entering the shallow aquifer if there is one, and thence flowing back into the local river and stream system, or simply adding moisture to the ground which can then be drawn up by plants.
While it is clearly not good that the pipes are leaking, this is the result of a network of supply pipes that are often in excess of 100 years old. It would be unreasonable and impractical to expect a century of under-investment to be made good over a period of a few years.
The regulator Ofwat sets maximum permissible leak losses; most of the UK's water companies (including I believe TW) meet those targets. I think Southern and South-western may be the exceptions that truly deserve to be criticised. Otherwise, the criticism should be on the regulator that sets the water loss targets, not the water companies that abide by the regulator's requirements
Biting the hand that feeds IT
