the hosepiope ban also as a silly side effect. you have a bath and have saved water, so throw a hosepipe from the bathroom window and SIPHON the water from the bath down the hose. this water would normally go down the drain but rather than WASTE it you use it to water the plants, you get a £1000 fine
No you wouldn't!
I'm happy to tell them. All water engineers agree that water is a completely renewable commodity. Evaporating water is not 'lost'. You are mistaking 'water infrastructure shortages' for 'water shortages'.
Of course, if 1000 of people decide to live in an area where the natural water provision can support 100, then people will go short unless they invest in a more sophisticated water delivery infrastructure. Lots of people can live in the Nevada desert if they pay for the infrastructure. What I am complaining about is that nobody seems to be addressing this issue in the way the Victorians did. Faced with impossible living conditions in London, they did not sit down and decide that they had reached the limit of their civilisation. They went ahead and built a sewer system that enabled the City to expand and prosper. Why can't we do the same today?
'Water' is a renewable and finite resource, yes.
Clean, available water that can be used by the ever expanding popluation of the planet IS NOT a never ending resource- nature just simply can't keep up- yes it's alright banging on about the water cycle, but water as salt water, water vapour, rain, streams and rivulets IS NOT useable water until it works it's way back into the reservoirs and lakes that we use to supply our mains- keeping the balance of what goes out to what goes in is a delicate and huge responsibility.
Siphoning off water at any stage before it collects into the lakes and reservoirs is out of the question because then it wholly interrupts with the local ecology and habitat.
As I said right at the beginning, it is NOT our problem individually, we are just the ones that reap the consequences of the uptil now (beginning to change) lacidasical attitude to water that industry around the world.
Yet we as end users also have our responsibilities- water is NOT ours, it is used by the entire planet and supports all life on it, second, but only just, to sun light as this planets most important factor for life existing here.
So when you turn the tap on to wash your teeth, turn it off while you brush- 7 or 8 litres of water can easily run out of a slow running tap in 1 minute- times this by lets say 20million people nationwide and you get the picture.
Those people that wash the car with a pressure washer, when quite clearly after 4 months of no rain there is no mud on it, use a bucket for goodness sake!
All those toilets that are in peoples houses from before 2004 that are over 6 litre flush- EVERY time you flush your toilet you are using 50% more water than a new toilet, even more if it is a pull chain type.
All those slow running constant feed urinal washers in all the offices, public toilets, theatres, cinemas, shopping malls, pubs etc- EVERY SINGLE ONE of those could be stopped by putting a 'cistermiser' on or an infrared flush sensor- billions and billions of litres of water are literally going down the pan!
And when it does rain we make no use of it at all- why dont we all have 500litre tanks below ground- certainly on all new build properties- that collect rainwater discharge from our gutters and grey water from our bath waste etc that we can use to flush the loo or water the garden- grey water is
FREE WATER!!!!!!We are all responsible for it- and I don't think by being responsible it means we have to resort to ancient living conditions at all- in fact reducing our needless water consumption would be a sign of progress if anything.
On the other hand the ageing and rapidly degrading infrastrcture we have is also to blame- the amount of leaks and burst that we have every year is scary- it's said that to raise Coniston Water 1 inch it takes 1billion gallons (thereabout) or 4.54 billion litres of rainfall- just think if we did all that I mentioned, plus every other detail that I've missed, we might not have a hosepipe ban right now.
It's allright for you guys that live in cities or countryside where hosepipe bans and drought are just an inconvinience, but if you took the trouble to come upto Cumbria and look at Windermere or Thirlmere (which was a week ago ALMOST dried up entirely) it is scary- and I'm not being dramatic here, when you think of the amount of water that has been used in such a short period of time and how many millions of people are relying on these water supplies, and you can see the bottom of most of the reservoir, and walk across it without getting your feet wet, that is scary.
Greg