Forget wind and focus on our vital water infrastructure

SEVEN water firms announced this week that they were introducing hosepipe bans from April 5 affecting 20 million customers in the face of a “severe” drought.

There is a severe shortage of water, particularly in the South East and East Anglia, with the latter introducing the first hosepipe ban in more than 20 years in order to safeguard customer supplies.

The last two dry winters have not provided sufficient rainfall to fill rivers, reservoirs and aquifers and the hosepipe ban, although an inconvenience to many people, is not nearly as serious as the situation faced by our food-producing farmers.

Farming land used for food production is so dry from this shortage of water, with an extremely low water table, that food crops will, inevitably, suffer and thus be far more scarce and expensive when they reach the shops.

In the North and particularly the North West, there is no water shortage, indeed the North West has received so much rain this winter that flooding has been the major concern.

Yorkshire Water is using the £300m grid of underground pipes it constructed, from its great foresight in anticipating future problems, to move 20 million litres of water per day to East Yorkshire from northern and central regions where it is plentiful.

Why doesn’t the Government spend money on pipelines to enable fresh water to be moved from places of plenty to drought- threatened areas? This, I believe, would be regarded as an easy feat for British engineers as it only involves a relatively short distance of 200-300 miles.

Such a water source could also be augmented by building desalination plants in appropriate locations to convert our plentiful supply of seawater into fresh water for, surely, Britain’s island heritage is a huge, free and surprisingly unused natural asset.

So, are these proposals unreasonable or unsound? Could it be that they would be very desirable but in the present economic climate we simply do not have the money to embark upon such schemes?

This would be incorrect. The money could be obtained quite easily if we stopped constructing onshore wind farms and instead used this money for this purpose.

The contribution to our energy needs from wind farms is minimal; their cost requires huge subsidies to be provided from increasing everyone’s energy bills; their appearance desecrates Britain’s beautiful countryside and their intermittent use increases, rather than reduces, carbon dioxide pollution as conventional power production sources still have to be used as a back-up and are not operating at their best.

Yes, instead of wasting such obscene amounts of money, transfer all this cash to build water pipelines and desalination plants and provide everyone with an absolute guarantee of fresh water, wouldn’t this be far more desirable?

But, I forget, the minimal hit and miss power generated by the indecent rush to install onshore wind turbines is obviously regarded as a greater benefit than fresh water.

Anyway, it has slipped my mind, how could I be so foolish to believe a guaranteed fresh water supply is a very desirable asset when Britain has to urgently build ever more wind farms in order to save the planet?

From: Ross Taggart, The Avenue, Eaglescliffe, Stockton-on-Tees.

AS a regular reader of your letters page, I have noticed more than one correspondent suggesting that the fresh water needs of say, East Anglia, could be met by seawater desalination facilities, powered by wind turbines, according to one suggestion.

Although it is admittedly many years since I sat physics A-level, I did a calculation that indicated that with careful rationing, East Anglia could be supplied with pumped fresh water from desalination plants powered by the energy from only two to three million such wind turbines!

My original euphoria was dashed though, when I realised that I had made a fundamental error in basing my calculations on efficiency figures claimed by the “renewable energy” industry. Using more accurate assumptions, I arrived at a figure of some 20 million turbines required (even allowing for minimal agricultural water use as little farmland would still be available). This figure, sadly, might well be seized upon by people less environmentally- conscious than myself to deride and discredit the whole project.

Lest this be the case, I urge an immediate start on this glorious project to save the planet!