Water - Clear Gold

Water when you have copious quantities is worthless; if you don’t have any it is more valuable than gold.

Water is available in abundance on our planet and we assume that it will always be available when and where we need it. People who live in desert regions know this not to be so. On a journey from one oasis to another you have to carry enough to make the journey, trusting and hoping that the water at the next oasis is clean and potable. Living in the wet and winding isles of Britain, water has never been much of a concern. When the reservoirs run low in a long hot summer hosepipe bans are introduced to conserve supplies, but we can be confident that the water will continue to flow when we turn on the tap.

After the hottest and driest April since records began we have been basking in delightful warm weather. The farmers are not pleased at this critical stage in the development of their crops. We hope and assume that the weather will break and the dry soil brought back to life but what if our weather patterns are changing? It is highly unlikely that Britain, an island surrounded by water would become a desert but we should be aware that in places where rainfall is less certain, there is a real danger that small changes in climate lead to drought and the formation of deserts. If is possible that the UK crops could fail we would be worried; if the crops failed two years in a row we would be very worried; in the third year of no rain we would be feeling very vulnerable indeed. These are the thought we must entertain if we are to have empathy for people living in vulnerable regions.

Our local water company, Thames Water is making preparations. Last year the Beckton desalination plant was commission to make water from the Thames estuary and process it into potable water. This is the technology more normally associated with desert regions and uses energy to desalinate the water. Climate change lead to less rainfall, leads to more desalination plants using more energy leading to more carbon dioxide emissions, leading to further pressure on the climate. Am I the only person to query whether we should break this self reinforcing cycle?

There is one way to break this particular cycle; nearby there is the Beckton sewage works. It would use much less energy to take the water coming out of the sewage works and process that back into the system as potable water. Clear gold from sewage – why not?