Thames Water’s £250m desalination site out of action until next year at earliest despite record summer heat
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With global warming and climate change the World and the UK is getting hotter and dryer, ice-caps are reducing as ice is melting, so increasing sea levels and there is much less rain, so casing inland water shortages. So, too much water in the seas and insufficient inland. So, surely any measures to take water from the seas and convert it to desalinated water, but is this occurring. But it is expensive, so by this article it is not. however, when is cost exceeded by necessity of demand, you would think, with the current drought conditions and that these will occur more and more as years go by.
The costs need to be reduced so, use of green processes more should be considered, wind farms, hydroelectric and others.
But will the water companies do this, are shareholders more important than customers and sufficiency of water.
Who are these water companies there for, their customers or Shareholders, well a privatised company should be there for both, but who should get the priority?
For without both the companies would not exist, without customers the company would not receive any income and without shareholders there would be no one to monitor the Directors and to own the company shares.
But to keep shareholders happy dividends need to be paid to shareholders, especially currently when great profits are being made, but also out of these profits investments also need to be made to ensure water supplies are maintained, leaks are repaired, new infrastructures installed, research conducted and new innovations considered, staff salaries are paid from.
If the companies are renationalised the theory is that all profits will be channeled to all of the above, with the exception of paying shareholders dividends because there will be no shareholders.
But these water companies used to be a nationalised industry, so why are the infrastructures so old, as it is reported that much of the current pipe works are still from the Victorian era, hence the excuse for so many leaks, so was the required investments not done to the degree required. Well not all pipes can be replaced at once, for the nationalised industry or even the privatised companies would not have sufficient staff to do so, but saying that was there really sufficient investment before privatisation.
Well, in my opinion, no for even though there were, technically no shareholders, there were, for although not classed as shareholders, it was owned by the country or the Government of the day by way of a Quangos, as each area of the UK had their own Water Boards or Authorities
So, Governments, in effect, controlled money to nationalised companies, so in virtually every nationalised industry, prior to any privatisation, there was lack of investment, as there was before they were nationalised .in the early 19th century. But, at least with nationalised industries the money would, more or less, be retained in the UK, but, it was pooled into Government and used how they felt fit, so money from water could be used anywhere other than water.
With privatisation, it was believed that the money raised would, in most instances, be retained in the UK by UK owned companies by members of the public owning shares or pension trusts. However, by passage of time, many of the original UK companies are now owned by organisations or outside the UK or countries.
Source: Water plant that could prevent hosepipe ban ‘secretly mothballed’
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