Too little water but numbers are important

Too little water but the numbers are important

According the an article in The National Trust Magazine, Autumn 2008 page 60

“The average demand for household water has increased dramatically; we now use half much water again as we did in 1980.

This is pertly to do with lifestyle changes-almost most households now have washing machine, a third have a dish washer. Its easy to think that the UK has a plentiful supply of water, but many rivers and wetlands are dryng up. Such water shortages impact son wildlife where waster is required for fish, wetland birds and other wildlife to survive and prosper

Southern and eastern England are officially classed ‘serious water-stress zones’ by the Environment Agency, an south-eat England has less water available per head than the Sudan’’

I wonder how much increase in demand has to do with the rapid increase in population since 1980 and of course the introduction for such things as washing machines and luxury items like dishwashers into the home play a part, as does the increase of small business that require water along with there industrial sized washers and dish washers.

It is rather telling that per head the south east, the most densely populated area of the UK, has less water than the Sudan. I guess there is no accident in using such a reference to a desert land, as it seems to refer to the millions of immigrants from such desert lands that have assisted in the mass consumption of water supplies that have helped to reduce the South east, (the most densely populated and the area of choice for most newly arrived), to near desert availability of water, with all the consequences for life, wildlife and natural habitat that this brings.

Of course the endless expansion of developments of houses and businesses, restaurants and car washes don’t help neither does the mass of what I call transient populations that visit and leave and the services such as extensive hotel building that goes with ‘Globalisation’ of the UK.

I guess these things are the ‘lifestyle change’ or rather, demographic change that the writer of the National Trust must being referring to.