Drinking Our Rivers Dry? Panorama

Are the nation's rivers and the wildlife they support under threat?

This is like our rainforest. They're ours to look after. If we

don't look after them, nobody else will. Much of our water comes from

rivers, and we're pushing many of them to the limit. The water is

going to our customers. We're not taking it because we want to, we

are taking it because we need to. Most of us have no idea how much we

use and what it really costs us. on average, your use was 443 litres

Are we in danger of damaging a precious resource which we all rely

on? Already our rivers are suffering, because so much water is

being taken out of them. It's a The last resort to keep the taps of

London flowing, a �270 million desalination plant. It'll produce

drinking water from seawater in the Why is it that, in a country where

we are always moaning about the rain, we need technology that's

more commonly used in very hot and It may seem hard to believe, but in

south-east England, there's less water per person than in Morocco or

Egypt, and we're all using about 15% more water than we did 25 years

In the UK, we take 13 trillion litres from the environment every

year, the vast majority from our The River Thames, one of the most

famous rivers in the world. It's cleaner than it's been in decades,

according to the Environment Agency, and so are many others. But that's

only part of the story. Taking so much water from our rivers is

putting the long-term health of For over 170 years, Henley Regatta

has been one of the mainstays in this country's social calendar. And

over the next few days, as many as half a million people are all going

to be coming here to enjoy the I think a river is part of the

character of any town or village. It's got a river running through it,

it's a big plus to where you're living. It is relaxing to sit by a

river on a summer's day. There's nothing quite like it. Without them,

Our rivers do more than supply a good day out. They provide most of

the water for our homes, industry This is the River Kennet in

Wiltshire. It's a tributary of the Thames and one of the UK's 161

chalk streams. They're almost unique to this country and fed by

vast natural underground reservoirs, Wow, this is beautiful, isn't it?

Look at this. What have you found? Have you found anything so far?

There's a whole host of different things in here that I have found at

the moment. Plant-wise, we've got starwort here, and also ranunculous,

the more stringy plant we've got in front of us. It's a classic chalk-

stream species, which is fantastic. How, then, do these help the

animals? Are these necessary for the animals to be here? Yes, the

fish, the trout, the grayling in the river will use this for shelter.

The invertebrates, the bugs will use this as food. These plants are

the basis for the ecosystem of the river, really, and if these

disappear, the whole of the life cycle of the river is disrupted.

Chalk streams like the Kennet provide an excellent barometer for

the health of the nation's rivers. Sounds like there's a zoo beneath

my legs. Let's see if we can see some of it. Right, you need to put

that down firmly in the river in front of your feet and shuffle your

feet around, so you are kicking up the gravels and the substrate and

everything has been thrown up into the net. Scoop it up. I got fish.

Oh, fantastic. Loads of them. you've got a bullhead here, which

is brilliant. They need really good water quality to survive. Is this

what our rivers should look like? This is a good example of a very

healthy, fantastic, classic chalk- This is like our rainforest. As a

nation, we're really good at worrying about what other people

are doing to their environment. Well, chalk streams we get in

southern England and along the east coast. There's a few in France, and

that's it in the world. And they're ours to look after, you know, if we

don't look after them, nobody else will. So, how are we doing? Well,

it's a different story downstream. Alistair Ewing has been farming

sheep on the banks of the River Kennet for nearly 30 years. In that

time, he's noticed a real change. We have a field over here and a

field over here. Effectively, 20 years ago, this river was a barrier,

so any animals here couldn't get to that field and vice versa. And then,

over a period of time, we found the river level was going down and the

animals were just walking across. So about 15 years ago, we ended up

having to fence both sides of the river and stop the animals crossing

the river. The main reason levels have dropped on this stretch of the

River Kennet is because of this, the Axford bore hole. Thames Water

uses it to pump water from the same underground reservoir which feeds

the river. When did they first start taking water out of the river,

then? Well, they first started taking water out in the 1960s, but

it was just to feed local houses and local farms. And they were just

taking out 13 cubic metres a day, 40 years on, Thames Water is taking

on average 10,000 cubic metres every day, and it can take up to

It's made a massive difference to the river, you know, it's a shadow

of its former self. To put that in perspective, Thames' licence to

take up to 13,000 cubic metres of water is the equivalent of more

than five Olympic-sized swimming Water which nature intended for the

river. Water companies have chosen to develop and exploit the cheapest

water sources first, and that has been good for us because it means

that water bills are lower than they would have been. But it is

becoming more important that they also take into account

Raiding our rivers in this way has left nearly a quarter of them at

risk. And the Kennet is one of them. The Thames Water licence to take or

abstract water from here is one of 21,000 policed by the Environment

We have some rivers which are being affected by a legacy of

abstractions, abstractions that were granted many decades ago and

are no longer sustainable in the new world that we have. There is

much higher environmental standards, environmental expectations and

legislative drivers for the environment as well, which means

that we need to protect environments like this so much

better than we did in the past. This is where water pumped from the

Kennet aquifer ends up. Welcome to Wroughton in south Swindon. How

much water in litres do you think you use every day, just you?

Probably about 20, I think about it. Must be 30, I should think.

litres. Oh, I should think 70, 80. Could be a bit more, couldn't it?

Could be a bit more. 30 to 40 litres, yeah. Probably about 80,

100 litres. Well, let's say 40. 40. It's actually about 150 litres

every day. Now, the second part of the question is, when you turn your

tap on and the water comes out, where does it come from? I've got

no idea. I would think it's natural, like the oceans. The rivers.

would guess most of it's from underground, this area. You are the

first person to get it correct today. So, around 150 litres. But

could we all help our rivers and save money by using less? Let's

find out. Meet the McRobies. There's Marie, Jamie, Olivia and

Water usage isn't one of those things in the front of your mind

from an energy-resource perspective, point of view, compared with

electricity and gas. And why do you think that is? I think water's a

difficult one to judge. We're not on a water meter here, so we get a

bill per year based on our rateable value, so it's not something we

First off, the family have agreed to have a water meter installed.

They're key to understanding how much we use. Just over a third of

all homes in England and Wales have one. In a week's time we'll be back

to show them the results. And it's important, because like the 62,000

other people who live in south Swindon, the McRobies get their

Here's the healthy stretch of the river we showed you earlier. Now

we've moved downstream. So, it may look shallow. It's just mud, look,

that's just mud. We're now three miles downstream from where we were

earlier, and the other side of the borehole. And so you can see

already, looking at the floor of the river, you've sediment built up

and algae growing here, and just look at it, compared to the site

earlier. We've got far less vegetation in the stream than we

had. There's a little bit, but what is growing here is clogged with

algae as well. Taking too much water doesn't just affect river

levels. It can also reduce the speed at which water flows. Time

for another net test. Let's see what we've got. Well, nothing,

we've got some stones. There's a couple of shrimp in there. We've

got some shrimp, but in the other site, in just about every net we

brought up, it had some fish in, and here just mud stones and shrimp,

really. To you, what does this say to you? It's says we need a faster

flow. We need to flush this sediment out. The Environment

Agency warns that most of our rivers are at the limit of what can

be sustainably taken from them. That pressure is only going to get

more acute in the future as the population increases. Our demand

for water will increase, but also climate change is highly likely to

mean a drier, warmer climate, and that push will demands up, and it

will probably reduce the amount of water available in rivers. So there

is a going to be a mismatch between how much water is available and how

much society and the economy needs.! Parts of Britain are in

drought after one of the driest springs in record. It may seem a

long time ago now, especially after we've just had one of our coldest

summers in years, but this spring was the driest in the south of

England and East Anglia since When we were in the peak of the

drought, this was being used 24 hours a day, seven days a week,

that's what the crop requires, when it's at its maximum growth.

Jones has a licence to take water from the River Wensum in Norfolk to

irrigate his crops. It's another river under pressure. The consumer

and the general public expect water out of a tap, and they expect to

walk into a supermarket and buy affordable food. I, as a farmer,

try to supply the affordable food, whatever the season, whatever the

weather, and to do that I need some guarantees of readily-available

If the drought had continued here, he faced having restrictions placed

If we couldn't take the water, it would have a huge impact on our

livelihood and the livelihood of the people associated with the

agricultural industry in this area. It may have rained a lot since the

spring, but parts of five counties in the south-east are still

And it's here where there's most pressure on water supply. Over the

next 15 years, the number of people living in London and the south east

There is the possibility, particularly in the south-east of

England, there won't be enough water in the rivers to be able to

supply the needs of households, and that will lead to things like

hosepipe bans and shortages of various kinds. And it would be very

bad for the environment, because we would be abstracting too much water.

So, with demand for water only likely to grow, it's not surprising

that water companies are looking for ways to increase supply. Every

villager in a lot of villages around will say that their village

is special. This one is quite historic. Just outside the village

of Steventon in Oxfordshire, Thames Water put forward one of its

preferred plans. A �1 billion We're more or less in the middle of

the reservoir, and it's about a mile in that direction, a mile in

that direction, a mile in that direction and a mile behind us. So,

sort of that tree line you see out there. It would have been

absolutely enormous. I mean, how much water was it going to hold?

It would have been the size of Gatwick Airport, and filling it

would have taken even more water from the environment. A public

inquiry wasn't convinced that Thames Water had fully considered

other, possibly more sustainable, options, or that it needed a

reservoir so big. Chris, what I don't understand is,

why would Thames Water spend nigh on �1 billion building something

that potentially they didn't need? If they can invest money in a large

capital project, they can charge their customers for it and get a

profit from that. So, building this would have made them money? Yes.

The financial incentive for water companies to build their way out of

problems dates back to the late 1980s. When the water industry was

privatised, its crumbling infrastructure badly needed

modernising. To do this, the newly- formed water companies were allowed

to make a profit on what they built. Over the last 22 years, it's helped

to deliver �96 billion of investment, but critics believe it

hasn't always helped the environment. When companies see

that in the future there's a gap opening up between demand for water

and supply, the thing that they prefer to do is to pour concrete,

in other words to build stuff like new reservoirs or a desalination

plant, rather than alternative ways of dealing with that gap which

increase their day-to-day spending, such as helping customers to reduce

their water demand, buying water from a neighbouring water company

or searching for leaks. If there is an option on the table which makes

the water company the most money as a commercial business, you're going

to go for that, aren't you? because the water-resource planning

process requires us to list all of the options for supplying the water

we need, ranked in total cost order, so economic cost, environmental

cost and social cost. It doesn't matter how the funding works, what

matters is the plan that we put forward has to be best deal for the

customers and the environment. Thames Water failed to make its

case for the reservoir and was sent back to the drawing board. Thames

Water really should be grossly ashamed of themselves in their

failure to investigate or for having dismissed so many of the

options that really were quite viable. There was an overriding

preference from Thames Water to build the reservoir? Yes, we

thought that was the best solution. Had you failed to look at all the

other options properly? We hadn't assessed them in as much detail as

the reservoir, which is what we are doing now. The next 15 years is

about managing demand and making sure we need less water, but that

has its limitations. When we get demand for water down as far as we

can, then we have to start building things. But the industry regulator

Ofwat says that dealing with the challenges of the 21st century may

mean having to encourage water companies to think differently.

Unquestionably, the water industry has had to deliver big capital

projects over the last 22 years. And that's what's given us safe,

secure water supply at a reasonable price, and a cleaner environment.

So it's not surprising that they continue to look at those as

options. The public inquiry has said they need to look at wider

options, we need to look at the future for making sure that the

companies have the right incentives to do exactly that, to look at the

broadest range of options both for the environment and the customers.

And one of the best ways to help our rivers is to reduce customer

demand. That's why the Government wants all of us to use less. From

150 litres per person per day down to 130. In south Swindon, we put

the McRobie family to the test. They agreed to have a water meter

installed in their home. Water expert Cath Hassell has been

monitoring the results. If you add it all up, you think it was roughly

160 litres, 180 litres as a family you used every day. Cath, how much

did they actually use as a family everyday? OK, on average, your use

was 443 litres per day. Well over three times as much as you thought

you were using. So, with Cath's help and a few

clever gadgets, can they reduce the amount they use? There are

technological solutions such as flow regulators for your showers or

for your kitchen taps, and the really important thing is, use less,

take less time in the shower, have a shallower bath, and start cutting

down, and you'll be amazed how quickly those things add up over

the course of a year. We'll be back in a week's time to

see if they can use less water and save themselves money. The price of

failing to cut water use looks like this. 20 years ago, parts of the

River Darent in Kent used to dry up completely. Since then, it's been

gradually nursed back to health. The purist fishermen would say this

is cheating. What is it you are actually trying to do? We're just

doing an electric fishing survey to look at the ecological health.

amount of water being taken out of the river has been reduced by 36

and a half million litres a day. It's now one of the Environment

Agency's ten most improved rivers. Is it a much healthier river now?

It's a healthier river, there's more water in it. There's higher

water levels and more flow. rescue plan is still not finished.

Even less water needs to be taken out to ensure a full recovery. And

this reversal of fortune hasn't come cheap. It's cost the

Environment Agency �17 million so far to get water back in the Darent.

Just one river, so how much might it cost to help fix the rest? It's

very hard to estimate this, but it has been estimated that it could

cost between �3.7 billion and �27 billion to address the problem of

damaging over-abstraction of water. The Environment Agency has reviewed

all the licences to take water from our rivers and identified 600 where

there's a serious risk of damage being caused. It says it's already

negotiated changes to 143 of them, and is still tackling another 279.

It admits that these are the most difficult. Those are a lot of

licences that are required for public water supply, and if we take

those licences away, it's having a knock-on effect on water companies'

ability to maintain security supply for customers. Also, some of those

licences are associated with agriculture, and farmers rely on

those for the economic sustainability of their farms.

at the River Kennet, the amount of water that can be taken from it

needs to be cut by almost half. There is a plan, but it'll be

expensive too. The south bit of Swindon can be fed by water from a

reservoir, which is existing. It has the capacity. The only reason

it can't be used is there's this missing piece of pipe. Building the

pipeline could cost �10 million. It's down to the Environment Agency

to pay, but it's taking time to raise the money. It's Thames Water

that are taking the water from the aquifer, so why don't you dip into

your very deep pockets and pay for it yourself? The water is going to

our customers, we're not taking it because we want to. We are taking

it because we need it to supply people from the Kennett. Now, there

is a properly-funded and established mechanism when we have

to give up an abstraction, which pays us the money. We need to put

in an alternative, and that's what we are taking advantage of. It'll

be at least five years before the pipeline is built. Only then can

the licence to take water from the Kennet be reduced. At the end of

the day, the licences just aren't getting changed fast enough, and it

could take, you know, hundreds of years at the current rate of

progress to get every licence sorted. The Environment Agency

doesn't believe it will take that long, but agrees we are at a

tipping point. This is where the real pressure lies in terms of if

our climate changes and the population increases, because we've

already got so many catchments at their sustainable limit, there is

no new water available for that growth. A much more dynamic link

between environmental status and the abstractions is probably

required in the future. With nearly a quarter of our rivers

at risk, later this year the Government will publish its

strategy for the future. It's being encouraged to be radical and give

water a price. Currently, it costs the same amount to abstract water

in the south of England, where the water is very scarce, than in the

north of England, where water is abundant. What we need to have is a

system of prices which means that where water is scarce, it is more

costly to abstract it. Where water is abundant, it costs zero to

abstract, and that will encourage trade between the regions. But at

the moment, companies only trade around 4% of all the water we use

in England and Wales. The regulations as they currently stand

now, people would say, are the main barriers to water trading. They

don't encourage water trading, they don't make it easy. Is that

something you concede? There are certainly some barriers there to

water trading, an absence of information on the value of water

in particular places. In one place, it will be plentiful, in another,

it will be scarce. But there is no clear value or price on that, so

water companies may find it difficult to make a choice

regarding the investment they make. That's the kind of barrier that

we've been looking at. Ofwat says by giving water a price,

trading could help the environment and save �1 billion over the next

35 years. That's future savings, but what about today? Can we do our

bit? How's it been this week, then? I know you had a timer in your

shower, didn't you? We've used that, and we've put a big sticker on the

door to remind us just before we got in to remind us to get the

timer going. How long are your showers now? Four minutes. It's

doable, actually. I was really surprised. So, looking back at your

experiences this week, are you confident that you've used less

water than you did? We certainly couldn't have used any more.

with all that effort, just how much water did they save?

So, you were using 443 on average before, between the four of you, so

110 about, and you have reduced it to 227, and I am completely

staggered by that. You've halved it. I am so impressed. It's a 49%

reduction, if we're going to be precise. Great news for our rivers,

and it could be good for the wallet too. At the moment, we've got your

bills here, last bill was roughly about �390, and it looks like it's

been creeping up over the last few years. So if you were to have a

meter installed in your house and you were to be using the level of

water you've been using this week, Cath, how much money would they

actually be spending? OK, it would cost you just over �220. It's big,

per year, so it's a really big saving. That's a lot of money.

You'd be saving roughly around �170 per year just on your water bill.

That's got to be good news, hasn't it? Yeah, that's excellent. To be

honest, actually, how many bills are going down?

So, right now, it's clear we can all make a difference. But it's

expected there's going to be another 20 million to supply by

2050. The current regulatory arrangements are not fit for

purpose for the world we are moving into. If we don't make the

arrangements fit for purpose, then water customers will not get the

best deal and we will not protect the environment. We are at a

crossroads and at a very important point right now. We think that

there are some improvements that can be made. They're about

incentivising water trading, better management of our resource, better

information to make sustainable solutions in the long term. We need

to evolve the regime. It's a here- and-now problem, our rivers are

suffering because water, so much water is being taken from them.

That's why it's so important that the Government take this

opportunity to rescue them. After Libya, will people power