Reported by The Guardian
After UK’s hottest summer on record, Ardingly near Haywards Heath is just 19% full – and next-closest reservoir is unusable due to broken treatment works
“Y ou can see the water level at Ardingly going down and down. I don’t remember ever seeing it this low,” says Caroline Allan, a lifetime resident of Haywards Heath, the nearest town to one of England’s most depleted reservoirs.
The Ardingly reservoir, managed by South East Water and serving about 95,000 properties in and around Haywards Heath and Uckfield in Sussex, is currently 19% full.
More from the original report
The day the Guardian visited, the weather was grey and rainy, incongruous with the muddy reservoir bed that should have been submerged under six metres of water.
Earlier this month a severe drought was declared in parts of Devon, Cornwall, Dorset, Somerset, East Sussex and West Sussex, with urgent measures being taken to secure public water supplies after the UK experienced its hottest summer on record .
Severe drought is the highest level of drought and is declared when evidence shows drought is causing or will soon cause serious harm, and when emergency action is needed to protect people, water supplies, the environment, farming, infrastructure or other critical services.
“They will probably never lift the hosepipe ban and it just seems so unfair that they’re making the area more and more crowded but they’re not increasing the capacity to store water,” said Allan.
There has been a steady stream of new housing developments around Haywards Heath, sparking local opposition , with concerns that a growing local population is putting pressure on already strained resources.
Water demand is increasing as the population grows and new industrial demands from datacentres and energy infrastructure require more water. Plus, the water available to supply those needs is reducing as the climate crisis worsens, resulting in greater variability and unpredictability of rainfall and greater water demand during hotter, drier summers. There has also been a lack of investment over several decades in fixing leaks and building new reservoirs.
Most of Europe has endured back-to-back climate crisis-driven heatwaves this summer. The extreme heat, coupled with…