The River Kennet, the largest tributary of the Thames, has become a symbol of the current drought affecting the east and south of England.

Both aquifers, which are natural underground reservoirs, and man-made reservoirs rely mainly on autumn and winter rainfall to recharge them, and this has been below average in the last few months.

As a result the Kennet is running dry and Ardingly reservoir in West Sussex and Bewl in Kent are around two-fifths of their normal levels.

After a summit of water company representatives yesterday, environment secretary Caroline Spelman warned that: "Drought is already an issue this year with the South East, Anglia and other parts of the UK now officially in drought, and more areas are likely to be affected as we continue to experience a prolonged period of very low rainfall.

"It is not just the responsibility of government, water companies and businesses to act against drought. We are asking for the help of everyone by urging them to use less water and to start now."

But is the drought really a problem of over-abstraction and bad management?

Water companies in drought-risk areas at yesterday's meeting agreed to reduce water losses and increase leakage detection.

But they have been charged with this task since the droughts of the mid-90s, when they were losing up to a half of all their water.

Ofwat says leakage has come down about a third since then, but companies' pipes still lose a staggering 1,501m litres a day.

This level of leakage is unlikely to fall lower unless the criteria for fixing the leaks is changed.

Sustainable economic level of leakage

Ofwat requires water companies to fix leaks "as long as the cost of doing so is less than the cost of not fixing the leak".

"The cost of not fixing a leak includes environmental damage and the cost of developing new water resources to compensate for the water lost through leaks," it says.

It calls this the "sustainable economic level of leakage", and indeed it is important to note that this use of the word "sustainable" is purely in an economic sense, not an environmental one.

With South East Water alone losing 96m litres a day through leaky pipes, asking people to take four-minute showers, while important, is not a sustainable solution to the drought or meaningful to the wildlife in the suffering watercourses.

Delays

Tomorrow, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee holds its first oral evidence session on the Water White Paper.

At previous evidence sessions, Defra has come under criticism for the length of time it is taking to produce the draft legislation and steer it through Parliament.

The focus of Defra's proposals contained in Water for Life seems to be more on deregulation and simplifying legislation, "to reduce burdens on business and stimulate growth", than about managing the crisis on the rivers.

Action for the River Kennet is a pressure group that has been campaigning for 20 years against excessive consumptive abstraction from the Kennet aquifer, which damages the flow and ecology of the River Kennet.

Its 600 members are calling for more effective action in dealing with over-abstraction and say that a solution for the problem at Axford was agreed in 2008, but there is still no commitment to funding its implementation.

The group complains that the ‘Restoring Sustainable Abstraction’ (RSA) programme drawn up by the Environment Agency is long winded and ineffective, and that there is no commitment to finding a solution.

They want DEFRA and Ofwat to bring RSA into the 2014 price review so that customers pay for the cost of rectifying the effects of over-abstraction, just as they pay for rectifying sewage pollution through their water bills.

Defra plans to develop an action programme for addressing unsustainable abstraction in the River Basin Management Plans up to 2027 and beyond, and is working with Ofwat and the Environment Agency on how best to include water company solutions for restoring sustainable abstractions in the price review process, including allowing more trade in abstraction licences.

Water companies' Water Resource Management Plans are intended to estimate the cost of these and factor them into water pricing.

The Kennet campaigners complain about the time all this is taking, and many critics of the White Paper lament the lack of any national management of water supply.

Water trading

The draft paper develops the concept of water trading and interconnecting pipelines but the means of planning and financing of what would be large inter-regional projects is unclear.

Water for Life comes down on preferring more local links, because of the cost and the carbon emissions associated with pumping large quantities of heavy water.

In its written evidence, Ofwat called for new suppliers to enter the market. It said that companies should be able to purchase water not only from each other, but also from new licensees.

"Those new licensees could have access to water sources that are less environmentally damaging than those of incumbent companies. Restricting the ability of incumbent companies to choose the best source of water – environmentally and economically – is likely to reduce the effectiveness of the WWP reforms," it wrote.

Early this month Defra published The Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill, but this focusses on paying South West Water to cut bills by £50 per year for all household customers from 2013 and paying for the cost of large infrastructure projects but the one most cited is the proposed Thames Tunnel in London, for dealing with sewage.

Pamela Taylor, chief executive of Water UK, estimates that the water industry needs to invest £22bn over the next five years in order to safeguard the high quality of service to customers and the environment, now and in the future.

There are only three sources of finance: tax-payers, bill-payers and investors.

Whichever way you look at it, we are going to be paying more to use the stuff that falls freely from the sky, and we will continue to lurch from one shortage crisis to another for the foreseeable future.

_{Story: David Thorpe, News Editor}