Now that there is a water shortage again isn't it time for desalination plants ?

There are plans at Anglian Water to implement the use of desalination units, but the water doesn't taste very nice. What they may do is blend the water with borehole and surface water to make it taste a bit better. Desalination is an expensive process and uses vaste amounts of electricity though. It's the price of electricity that is the biggest part of the process and the ultimate customer bill apart from staff pay, so the bill may also have to rise to pay for it which isn't a popular solution of course.

If everyone is sensible and uses water 'wisely', there should be no problems. Unfortunately, 'wisdom' is not something that people tend to use in Britain at the moment, and it's 'me me me' all the time, so the problem isn't going to go away unless big heads that insist on over using water get their heads out of their aszes and start being good human beings.

There are times when I just despair of you guys, I mean people of your obvious low mentality and I.Q. Apart from putting meters on every tap in your house, how can the government be responsible for people wasting water. The shortage is because of low rainfall this winter, that is a given, but people still refuse to save water. The leave taps running while cleaning teeth, when washing their hand they have the water running, they water their lawns, they wash their cars with a hosepipe instead of a bucket.They stay under the shower for ages. All of these things waste water, but people like you always want to blame the government, is it Camerons fault? A desalinization plant is horribly expensive to operate and would not be cost effective in the UK. In a desert region where there is no alternative, well thats a whole different ball game, at least they could use evaporation in stead of fossil fuel. I doubt that reverse osmosis would be very useful for huge amounts of water needs.

NO!

Ken is history. Also he is a socialist and can only suggest expensive solutions.

Desalination is very expensive and requires power. Where is the power to come from and at what cost?

The cheapest way is to ban hosepipes until the rivers flow again and the ground water collects.

Gardeners in the dry areas should stop their water wasting and grow plants which do not need so much irrigation.

OR

Tax people for wastefully pouring water on their gardens; tax sprinkler users. It is better than fines. The money should go to the water companies ring-fenced for leak repair.

Better do both.

There is already a desalination plant on line at Beckton in East London treating Thames water. It is capable of processing 150 million litres a day and actually opened in 2010. Ken Livingstone was AGAINST desalination, by the way, for the same reasons Water Companies are loathe to use it, it is very expensive, around double the cost of normal water.

The Romans built aqueducts which brought water down from far away. Scale that up to todays needs and you could have underground/overground pipe systems running down from Wales and Scotland.

If the Victorians could build mega projects like the London sewers, the tube system, and the canals used by barges during the 1700s - 1800s, there's nothing stopping modern engineers from working out a way of bring water down from the mountain tops.

Only useless politicians. This would have been a better project than that train system they propose to build cutting through the country side.

Desalinated water is OK in an emergency for drinking water but no good for long term general use, its expensive and energy consuming.

Your water bills in the SE would rocket and so would your Carbon footprint and in this day an age of greenhouse warming hysteria, not a good idea.

How about actually wasting less water. The UK is notorious with wasting money since the people don't want to pay by usage but fixed water rates.

If companies and citizens actually had to pay by the water they use, this would be very quickly resolved.

Well if old Red Ken proposed this it must be a silly waste of money that old fool would not know what to do if they changed the color of the toilet paper

If that fool ever made the mistake of coming to America that whilst boy would never return to London

Absolutley not!

There is no water shortage. HELLO the world in 80% water.

Only RACISTS/.NAZIS use water/food shortages as an anti immigration trick.

Are you a nazi? then DON'T belive in water shortages.

EVERYTHING IS FINE HERE!

Is that water shortage in the UK or the US?