The English are a "flower-loving nation," said George Orwell in
The Lion and the Unicorn
, the best essay ever written on the British character.
Not because of a particular sense of aesthetics, but because of her passion for
hobbies
and domestic privacy.
The drought and heat waves that the United Kingdom has suffered this summer, as a result of climate change, have come to ruin the gardening vocation of a country that is not used to irrigation.
Thames Water
(TW)
,
the company that supplies 15 million consumers in the city of London and throughout the Thames Valley, in southeast England, has already joined, from 0.00 on Wednesday, the ban imposed by other water distributors to water gardens, wash cars or fill swimming pools.
When Yorkshire Water, another water supplier, joins the restrictions this Friday, 29.4 million UK citizens will be affected by rationing.
Those who break the restrictions are exposed to fines of up to 1,000 pounds (1,184 euros, at current exchange rates).
The month of July has been the driest in the country since 1885, with temperatures easily exceeding 40 degrees Celsius.
The Thames is at its lowest level since 2005, despite the fact that the demand for water has been one of the highest in recent decades.
TW currently supplies close to 3,000 million liters per day, with increases of up to 50% compared to other times of the year.
The company aspires, with the restrictions imposed, to reduce the average number of liters that each of its users consumes during a day from 150 to 100.
leaking water
The good words and good intentions of the company have collided with some clients who observe a clear contradiction between the demand for austerity and the waste caused by outdated infrastructures and little expense in their maintenance.
According to TW's own calculations, 635 million liters are lost each day due to leaks that need to be repaired.
The Government has already fined the company more than eight million euros, after being found guilty of dumping wastewater into rivers and oceans.
In the town of Oxford alone, more than 3,000 fish were found dead.
“Imposing a temporary water ban on our customers has been an extraordinarily difficult decision to make, and one we have not taken lightly.
After several months of rain below the annual average and extreme temperatures in July and August, the aquifer resources of our region have suffered a serious decrease”, Sarah Bentley, the executive director of TW, has tried to justify, about which she has A rain of criticism fell when it was made public that last year he received a bonus of almost 3,000 euros.
“Despite investing to launch the UK's largest leakage reduction programme, consumer demand is at unprecedented levels, and we must move into a new phase of our anti-drought plan to conserve water. Water,
The GMB union, majority in the company, assures that the current water leaks that occur every day would be equivalent to a person keeping the hose open, at full flow, for 73 years in a row.
Despite heavy rain and flooding in parts of the UK over the past week, the Environment Agency continues to warn that it will take several weeks to replenish stocks and end the drought emergency.
Despite the fact that this Thursday abundant rain has fallen again in the London region, in the northeast of England the rains in August have not even reached 12% of the annual average.
In the south and southeast, not a single drop has fallen.
The Labor opposition blames what happened on the years of privatization and neglect of public resources by conservative governments.
“More than 600 million liters lost every day, and dividends for shareholders worth 44 million euros.
We urgently need Thames Water back in public hands," Diane Abbot MP wrote on Twitter.
