Respecting water - Attitudes to water use must change

MINISTER for the Environment John Gormley’s announcement yesterday that the Government is to undertake a multi-billion euro investment programme to upgrade water services is as welcome as it is overdue.

Our present situation, where local authorities lose anything between 16% and 58% of the water treated, at great expense, because of leaking pipes cannot continue. It is economically wasteful and in a world where clean drinking water is an ever scarcer gift it is immoral.

The extraction of vast quantities of water from our rivers is having a profound impact on them and it seems daft to be harming our waterways just to lose so much water through old, leaking pipes.

Minister Gormley outlined a three-year plan, which will involve spending €320m on upgrading pipes. Despite the urgency brought to the project by the prospect of significant daily fines under the EU’s Water Framework Directive the reality is that Mr Gormley is faced with the consequences of years of neglect and mismanagement. He, and the rest of us, must know that the perilous water supply situation highlighted during last winter’s cold snap was almost as much to do with faulty systems as it was with the weather.

Our water consumption is no longer just a domestic issue as a report published in Britain yesterday highlights. The Engineering the Future alliance of professional engineering bodies warned that the amount of water used to produce food and goods imported by developed countries is worsening water shortages in the developing world. The report argued that this is unsustainable, given population growth and climate change.

Analysts believe that when the world’s population goes beyond eight billion in just two decades global demand for food and energy will jump by 50%. Demand for fresh water will rise by 30%. This will hit developing countries especially hard as they are already using significant proportions of their water to grow food and produce goods for consumption in the West.

As we have taken water for granted for so very long we will have to change the way we use it. We will have to become far more conscious of the concept of “embedded water” — the water used to grow food and make things. Embedded in a pint of beer, for example, is about 130 pints (74 litres) of water — the total amount needed to grow the ingredients and run all the processes that make the pint of beer.

A cup of coffee embeds about 140 litres (246 pints), a cotton T-shirt about 2,000 litres, and a kilogram of beef about 15,000 litres, more than 10 times that required to grow the same amount of wheat.

We will have to become more adept at water harvesting and consider using grey water — perfectly good water but not fit for human consumption — for many of household chores. It seems daft to, say, wash the car or flush toilets with drinking water. These requirements should be incorporated in all planning permissions.

Mr Gormley’s announcement will lead to water charges, but if they lead to water security then it will be money well spent. There must be two caveats though. Any money raised through water charges must be ring-fenced to sustain and improve services.

The second must be that our water services must never be privatised. If there are profits to be made let them be made to improve the services not enrich faceless international bondholders.