Water, Water Everywhere and Not a Drop to Drink!

There was a great fanfare when Thames Water's £250m Beckton desalination plant was launched in 2010. The plant would increase London's water supplies, in long hot dry spells, by the simple process of removing salt from seawater. 2022 has been exceedingly hot and dry, especially in the London area. The Beckton desalination plant, however, will not be functional anytime this year (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/environment/2022/08/03/londons-desalination-plant-wont-fired-even-official-drought/). Having a desalination white elephant, seems a prime symptom of 'greenwash'. This is yet another indication that the UK's privatised Water Companies are neither competent nor predisposed to deal with the challenges of climate change. They appear to be too busy, boosting their profits, by illegally discharging raw sewage into English and Welsh rivers (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/04/sewage-sleuths-river-pollution-slow-dirty-death-of-welsh-and-english-rivers). This is the easy option, as the bodies that are supposed to catch and punish them, have been largely defunded.