Water shortage

[fred]

In the areas being supplied by tanker is the bottled water supply free ?

[Brian Gaff]

I'd imagine it was, as back in the day we had water this way, and we all got a crate of it a day. Brian

[Jim Stewart ...]

no idea but the Gorbols reservoirs near Largs are full to bursting......want to buy some?

[Jim Stewart ...]

[Fredxx]

The Chinese have a solution:

[Brian Gaff]

About ten years ago, it was muted that we should have a water national grid, but the cost was going to be very high, and those places where there was lots of water, people mumbled about using the norths water to keep those southerners alive or somesuch.

Exactly how expensive is it to de salinised sea water? OK I know it can taste, well, tasteless but its still water. Brian

[GB]

My mum did her medical degree in Glasgow, and she then became a gynaecologist and went round the Gorbals delivering babies during the blitz. She said that Glaswegians were lovely people, but it never seemed to stop raining. So, yes, you're probably the last place in the UK with loads of water. :)

[Rod Speed]

Brian Gaff [e-mail] wrote

Very. We have at least one in most of our southern capital citys.

Very expensive to run too, massive users of electricity.

[Jim Stewart ...]

Glaswegians are a bunch of scumbags ,,,,

[Jethro_uk]

ISTR Kielder Dam also pours away more water a day that could have gone south.

A real country would have built a north-> south water spine decades ago. because the plan B of not encouraging people to live in the north hasn't worked.

[alan_m]

And the Russians just diverted the waters before they reached the Aral Sea.

[alan_m]

We could use all that free wind energy in the desalination plants. It possibly would help if global warming gave us 40C temperatures every day.

[Chris Hogg]

Very. Some of the Gulf states do it IIRC. Either done by distillation or reverse osmosis. The former requires lots of energy to heat the water, although some of it is presumably recoverable, and the latter requires lots of energy to pressurise the pumps, but I don't know how much of it is recoverable, if any. And of course energy is getting more expensive by the minute. OK if you're an Arab Sheik sitting on massive reserves of oil and gas that you might otherwise flare off, but not OK for the rest of us.

[Colin Bignell]

That's not true. Sometimes it snows.

So, yes, you're probably the last place in the UK with

[Colin Bignell]

It depends upon the cost of electricity. In the gulf states, where it is cheap, around USD 0.5 per cubic metre. In Australia, around USD 1.5 per cubic metre. Both as at 2018 and are the cost to the supplier, so not easily compared to what we, as consumers, get charged for water in the UK.

Generally, it is considered only worthwhile if electricity is cheap or, like Malta, there is no alternative.

[Spike]

And Vozrozhdeniya Island is no longer an island…

☣️⚠️Trigger warning ☣️⚠️

Mentions bioweapon research

[Tim Streater]

As a result of which the Aral Sea has essentially dried up.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its very doable with a coastalo sited nuke that will anyway be producing gallons of pretty hot seawater. Just blow air over it and into a condenser in the sea.

[Jim Stewart ...]

plus they don't wash ....

[Andrew]

The Israelis seem to do de-salination very effectively.