People who choose to water particularly large gardens “should be paying through the nose for it”, the government’s climate change adaptation adviser has said.
Baroness Brown of Cambridge said that water companies could help stop taps running dry in the coming decades by charging households more per litre the more they use.
Though she did not give a definition of a large garden Brown, who leads the climate change committee’s work on adapting to rising temperatures, argued the measure could help reduce water usage without penalising the worst off.
Brown urged households to reduce daily water use from 140 litres per person to 110 litres by 2055
UK PARLIAMENT
The Environment Agency has estimated that due to the rising population and hotter, drier summers, England could face a shortfall of 5 billion litres of water per day by 2055, about a third of current usage.
Speaking to the House of Lords’ environment and climate change select committee about how to prevent this shortfall, Brown said that new reservoirs were expected to address only 40 per cent of it. Further water savings would have to come from fixing leaky pipes and reducing household usage.
When millions of gardeners reach for their hosepipes in dry weather, the strain on the country’s water supply can be considerable. During this year’s particularly dry April, Yorkshire Water recorded a rise in usage of 80 million litres a day — as much as York and Harrogate’s daily usage combined.
This year’s Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) Gardening Report estimated British households use some 500 million litres per day on their gardens. Just 18 per cent of this usage comes from collected rainwater and greywater and 40 per cent is mains-only water.
Woodhead reservoir, Derbyshire, in May
ADAM VAUGHAN/EPA
The RHS suggests that as the climate changes, gardeners could opt for drought-tolerant species such as lavender, marjoram, and California lilacs to populate their gardens. The organisation also suggests they make best use of scarce rainfall by collecting it in water butts or planting in places that will receive runoff from rooftops.
Last week the Met Office warned that the country was unlikely to receive enough rainfall this winter to bring an end to the drought that has persisted across parts of the country since this spring, which was the driest on record. Hosepipe bans have been lifted in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, but are expected to remain in place across Yorkshire and parts of the southeast well into the winter.
Reservoirs in England are currently 65.8 per cent full, far lower than the average for this time of year of 77.4 per cent. Last week executives at one major water company told The Guardian that if this winter proved as dry as forecast, they would have to take drastic measures “beyond hosepipe bans” to cut households’ water usage.
The dried up bed of Baitings Reservoir in Ripponden, West Yorkshire, in July
CHRISTOPHER FURLONG/GETTY IMAGES
As the climate warms up, such droughts are expected to become far more frequent. A summer as dry as that of 2022, when wildfires broke out in east London and temperatures hit 40C, could be twice as likely to happen by the 2050s, Brown said.
She added that there needed to be “much better engagement with the public” to highlight how to reduce water usage from 140 litres per person per day to 110 litres by 2055. “We should discourage people from having power showers,” she said, also arguing for the introduction of smart water meters in homes to help people track their usage.
• Why London’s ‘supersewer’ is desperately in need of a downpour
She added: “Because there is this perception that we live in a wet country and we’re surrounded by the sea, [the threat of water shortages] doesn’t impact on the public consciousness enough … It does need the public really engaged in this.
“In Mediterranean countries people are much better at being sparing with water, and they have levels of more like 80-100 litres of water per person a day.”
The peer added that her suggestion of instituting “block pricing” — where the price per litre leaps up after a certain point — was her own idea, not the view of the climate change committee. Water bills are set to rise 36 per cent over the next five years after the industry regulator Ofwat approved companies’ plans to spend £104 billion fixing leaky pipes and stopping sewage flowing into rivers.
The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs was approached for comment.
Comments are closed.