Dave.C wrote:
It's time for compulsory universal water metering and those who want to lay
water out to dry on their gardens or on golf courses should pay handsomely
and be prohibited from doing so any way in times of drought. This kind of
usage is hardly one of life's essentials.
Tudor Hughes, Warlingham, NE Surrey 556 ft.

I've virtually halved my Water and Sewerage charges since I've been metered.
That's with 3 adults (counting my daughter!) in the house. I favour a two
tiered metered charge. One rate slightly lower than current on the average
volume used by a family of 4, plus 25% allowance on top then a secondary
rate for volumes above this with a 100% surcharge. This will mainly hit
people with swmming pools, endlessly use of sprinklers, pressure washers
etc. With the former the elderly will never have to worry about how much
they are using and will save a lot of money, as will almost everybody. Also,
I have found by being metered people are much more sensible and don't tend
to just chuck this valuable resource down the drain.

Dave

Good ideas, Dave. It's the solution I would favour, but there
is a surprising amount of resistance to it, from conversations I have
had. It's a combination of feelings that we would pay more (not true)
and that water ought to be free since it falls out of the sky (or at
least used to). But that's nonsense because it has to be stored,
treated and pumped and the infrastructure maintained.
A national water grid would be ideal, but would cost a lot and
would need energy to shift large amounts of water around the country.
I'm not enough of a hydraulic engineer to say exactly how much. It all
depends on pipe diameter, roughness, slope (if any) and flow rate.

Tudor Hughes, Warlingham, Surrey.