The plan comes after Ofwat, the sector regulator, provisionally agreed that Southern Water could raise bills by 44 per cent over the next five years from April.
Southern Water has entered discussions with the UK private company Extreme Drought Resilience Service, according to the Financial Times. The Environment Agency is understood to be in contact with Norwegian regulators over the plan.
The agency previously warned that Southern Water’s overreliance on [freshwater](https://archive.is/o/ByLfT/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/water-and-sanitation/) had left the country more susceptible to droughts. Nearly 70 per cent of the company’s water supply is currently extracted from groundwater and chalk streams.
Tim McMahon, Southern’s managing director for water, described the shipping plans as a “last-resort contingency measure that would only be used for a short period in the event of an extreme-drought emergency”.
Mr McMahon said Southern was working to take less water from its chalk streams and to build new reservoirs such as Havant Thicket in Hampshire, which it hopes to operate from 2034.
Southern Water said: “We’ve adapted our plans to deliver an environmentally resilient solution that meets the requirements of the Environment Agency’s abstraction licence reductions, which result in a shortfall of 166 million litres of water a day in Hampshire during a drought.”
Water firms have been lobbying regulators to raise customers’ bills to fund infrastructure development, but campaigners argue consumers have already paid enough for upgrades which have not been undertaken.
Meanwhile, March of this year marked the wettest 18 months for England since records began in 1836.
PositiveLibrary7032 on
So thats just England then. Scots won’t really need imports.
D0wnInAlbion on
They should be digging reservoirs. UK businesses just refuse to invest in any capital.
LauraPhilps7654 on
Water privatization is the most significant failure in the broader wave of privatization initiatives.
But seriously – what sort of political ideology is “greedy shareholders always run public services better” anyway?
In reality, shareholders focus on maximizing profits and dividends, often at the expense of long-term investments and essential infrastructure. This profit-driven approach typically leads to inflated bills and cut corners on critical upgrades.
Imagine – if this had never happened – all the billions that could’ve been invested in our water infrastructure instead of going offshore as profit for the investor class.
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>Southern Water has drawn up contingency plans to ship in water from Norwegian fjords to mitigate against potential supply shortages and [drought](https://archive.is/o/ByLfT/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/drought/).
The water company, which serves [4.7 million customers](https://archive.is/o/ByLfT/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/18/you-might-die-before-leak-fixed-southern-water-tells-widow/), has proposed shipping 45 million litres of glacial water daily for six weeks from Scandinavia to Southampton in a scheme which would be paid for by customers’ bills.
The plan comes after Ofwat, the sector regulator, provisionally agreed that Southern Water could raise bills by 44 per cent over the next five years from April.
Southern Water has entered discussions with the UK private company Extreme Drought Resilience Service, according to the Financial Times. The Environment Agency is understood to be in contact with Norwegian regulators over the plan.
The agency previously warned that Southern Water’s overreliance on [freshwater](https://archive.is/o/ByLfT/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/water-and-sanitation/) had left the country more susceptible to droughts. Nearly 70 per cent of the company’s water supply is currently extracted from groundwater and chalk streams.
Tim McMahon, Southern’s managing director for water, described the shipping plans as a “last-resort contingency measure that would only be used for a short period in the event of an extreme-drought emergency”.
Mr McMahon said Southern was working to take less water from its chalk streams and to build new reservoirs such as Havant Thicket in Hampshire, which it hopes to operate from 2034.
Southern Water said: “We’ve adapted our plans to deliver an environmentally resilient solution that meets the requirements of the Environment Agency’s abstraction licence reductions, which result in a shortfall of 166 million litres of water a day in Hampshire during a drought.”
Southern Water received a [record fine](https://archive.is/o/ByLfT/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/08/19/water-suppliers-brace-for-2bn-in-sewage-fines/) of £90 million for [sewage pollution](https://archive.is/o/ByLfT/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/25/southern-water-dumps-sewage-chalk-stream-legal-action/) in 2021, which left it teetering on the brink of collapse before it was taken over by Macquarie, the Australian investment manager, later that year.
Water firms have been lobbying regulators to raise customers’ bills to fund infrastructure development, but campaigners argue consumers have already paid enough for upgrades which have not been undertaken.
Parts of England came close to running out of water in the summer of 2022, which was recorded as one of the driest in England on record. [Thames Water](https://archive.is/o/ByLfT/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/09/19/thames-water-seeks-to-delay-billions-in-debt-repayments/) came within three-and-a-half weeks of exhausting water storage.
Meanwhile, March of this year marked the wettest 18 months for England since records began in 1836.
So thats just England then. Scots won’t really need imports.
They should be digging reservoirs. UK businesses just refuse to invest in any capital.
Water privatization is the most significant failure in the broader wave of privatization initiatives.
But seriously – what sort of political ideology is “greedy shareholders always run public services better” anyway?
In reality, shareholders focus on maximizing profits and dividends, often at the expense of long-term investments and essential infrastructure. This profit-driven approach typically leads to inflated bills and cut corners on critical upgrades.
Imagine – if this had never happened – all the billions that could’ve been invested in our water infrastructure instead of going offshore as profit for the investor class.