SOME PARTS of southern England, which is facing the worst drought since 1976, could face catastrophic water shortages next year if winter rains fail to arrive for the third year in a row, the UK’s Environment Agency has waned.
Seventeen counties in south-west England and the midlands have been added to the drought-affected list, which already includes London, the southeast and the agriculturally-important east of England.
The Environment Agency yesterday warned that drought orders will stay in place until Christmas, while any rain that arrives over the late spring and summer will do little now to replenish parched aquifers.
Parts of England received less than 60 per cent of the expected rainfall over the winter months, though the agency is already working with water companies to see how they might better share supplies between each other if a third dry winter occurs.
The difference between southern England and the rest of the UK is stark. Reservoir levels in Wales, northern England and Scotland and Northern Ireland are on average about 10 per cent down on normal, but in the south the fall is 50 per cent in many cases.
A hosepipe ban has already been brought into force in many areas, though farmers face the danger that they could be ordered to limit the amount of water they take from rivers or wells later in the summer if the situation continues.
The pain will not be equally shared. In London, some supplies can come from a desalination plant, while Devon, Cornwall and Somerset, all of which are marked as drought-affected, have reasonably-full reservoirs and low demand because the local population is small.
Anglian Water, which serves eastern England, says its regions have had their driest 18 months for a century, while Thames Water in London says that the capital has seen less rainfall two years in a row only twice before: 1892-93 and 1920-1921.
The Centre for Ecology and Hydrology said levels in some English rivers are already below the levels that were found during the height of the 1976 droughts, while a few even failed to beat that level during their mid-winter flows.
The low flows have heightened the dangers posed by sewage run-off from farms, forcing the rescue of fish on some rivers. Some wetlands, such as the Titchwell Marsh in Norfolk, are described as “highly stressed”, while movement on the Grand Canal is already restricted.
