Water Companies Back Large Scale Transfers

A number of companies recently outlined plans for massive transfers in front of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) select committee in parliament. The transfers involve taking large amounts of cash from customers and transferring them to water companies, engineering consultancies and The City.

A spokesperson said that in order to get the cash to London in huge barges it would be necessary to build a massive water network. The network would be filled with water form the North (where both UU and Yorkshire Water recently had drought permits granted because of concerns over drought) and pass through the Midlands (where Severn Trent recently had drought permits granted because of concerns over drought), to the South (where water companies have concerns over shareholder dividends).

The water companies said that this enormous infrastructure project was so essential that the normal rules about having to show environmental benefits should be ignored (whilst some parts of this article may be slightly satirical, this bit is actually, unbelievably, true). The new transfer network would use existing rivers (lovely ones with swans on and stuff) and canals (quaint ones with brightly painted narrowboats) and the water companies would produce reports showing people sitting by these beautiful waterways having picnics whilst the local economies flourished, but would show no pictures of the pumping stations or the lifeless concrete channel parts of the network, or of any environmental damage as the North was sucked dry.

No one pointed out the problems with water chemistry, or with the huge costs of construction and operation of this scheme, or the fact that canals are generally static and not designed for massive flows, or the fact that there are no parts of the UK with 'too much water'. Neither did anyone mention the fact that this sort of thing is illegal under the European Water Framework Directive which is why the Spanish North-South Water transfer never happened (but we are leaving soon anyway so those evil Europeans can't stop us trashing our water environment anymore - hurrah!!).

There is also the issue that you could meet water demand through water efficiency, full metering and leakage reduction, which would be cheaper and more sustainable and also help reduce household bills. But that's the problem, if we went for that option rather than desalination, or reservoirs or huge pipelines, then the massive transfers of money from customers to utilities and financiers would start to dry up and no one wants that.