Over the last month, water companies across the south have been imposing hosepipe bans (and taking the opportunity to increase tariffs and press the Environment Agency, to approve compulsory water meter installation).

While it is certainly true that the last 9 months has been an unusually dry period and this, combined with a significant level of consumer waste has made a bad situation worse, the root cause of the problem is undeniably years of underinvestment in the water infrastructure.

Water companies have – by and large – refused to acknowledge the apparent level of gross mismanagement and incompetence within their own organisations, which is what is most directly responsible for the current situation.

And who looks after OUR interests? In a week where the Environment Agency itself has been fined for water pollution it’s hardly surprising that public confidence in the government quango that is supposed to act on behalf of the public, has fallen to an all time low.

While we all need look at ways in which we can minimise our personal water wastage, a far greater saving could be made if water companies concentrated more on building new reservoirs and maintaining the network infrastructure and less on delivering high dividends to shareholders.

Maybe then, we would all have more than a drop to drink!

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