Water, water everywhere!

Devon’s residents are facing a hosepipe ban despite a soggy spring. Is it down to poor management of this vital resource, or are large new housing developments draining our supplies?
In his poem ‘The Ancient Mariner’, Devon-born poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously wrote: “Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink!” It aptly sums up our current situation in Devon where clean fresh drinking water is apparently in short supply, despite the wettest March in years and a rainy April too. So, who’s to blame for this predicament?
In my opinion, South West Water lacks foresight in its management of this most precious resource. In a county like Devon, you don’t need a crystal ball to know that the population will multiply over the summer as tourists flock to our green and pleasant county. You’d imagine the water companies would have algorithms to calculate the resulting rise in demand for water. Are they just erring on the side of caution by restricting hosepipe use now?
More to the point, why are water reserves so low? Put simply, demand has exceeded supply. Why? Basically, because too many houses have been built without increasing water storage facilities.
Roadford Lake was the last reservoir completed in Devon in 1989. Since then, Devon’s population has rocketed, without, it seems, South West Water objecting to vast housing schemes like Cranbrook and Sherford. Extraordinarily, SWW is not even a Statutory Planning Consultee. It means those responsible for determining planning applications do not legally have to seek an opinion from the water company over the viability of supply, let alone sewage disposal.
Devon CPRE believes this must change to give SWW the power to object to the glut of large-scale housing developments on farmland, which are (incidentally) destroying land capable of contributing to another vital resource - home-produced food supplies.
Our charity commissioned a housing report in 2018 which clearly established that a third more houses than needed were being built in Devon. It seems this dystopian remit continues unabated, with recent aspirations to increase the size of already large developments at Cranbrook, Cullompton and in the Greater Exeter Region. The water supply crisis is only going to get worse.
Although statistics vary, it’s generally accepted that Devon’s population has risen by almost 36% since the 80s. Yet instead of extending the capacity of Roadford Lake to accommodate the rising demand, holiday lodges have been built on the surrounding land!
The UK’s water supply and sewage are inextricably linked; why on earth do we use drinking water to flush our toilets? Our sewage disposal mechanisms are broken too; sewage pollutes every river and almost every beach in the area, yet the Government has failed to insist that discharging effluent into storm drains must stop.
2022 was a dry year, so why were a number of districts served by SWW blighted by over 5,000 sewage discharges, amongst the largest of any area in the country? Clearly, it wasn’t because of excessive rainfall overwhelming the storm drains, No, it’s because there are too many homes with insufficient sewage treatment facilities. It’s time for some joined-up thinking or our drinking water and sewage crises are doomed to go from bad to worse.
To help us protect Devon’s countryside for future generations, go to www.devoncpre.org.uk.