This document should keep you awake at night.
The govtās National Risk Register now ranks losing our drinking water alongside a PANDEMIC as one of the two biggest threats facing the country
This year, in the right-hand document: The chances of āCatastrophic impactā on our drinking water supplies - up to a one in four chance.
Last year, same document (on the left) rated it a minor risk. Bottom of the chart.
So what changed? Nothing changed!
Water is still in private hands and depute the Water Special Measures Act deteriorating rapidly.
This is where 36 years of privatised water has brought us.
Tens of billions handed to shareholders. Over £60 billion of debt racked up on water assets that should belong to al of us.
Leaking pipes. No new major reservoirs. Sewage in our rivers, on our beaches, in our sea.
They didnāt invest. They extracted. And now the stateās own risk experts are telling us the tap water could go.
And the regulators? They watched. Fines for pollution became a business expense. Thames Waterās creditors are now asking for their pollution fines to be written off. You couldnāt make this stuff up!!!!
So letās cut the crap about ātougher controlā of water companies. Weāve tried that for 36 years. It ended with drinking water on the national risk register next to a pandemic. You canāt regulate a cash machine into caring about you.
Thereās one answer. Bring water back into mutualised public ownership. Run for people, not profit. Answerable to bill payers, not bondholders. Every single pound going back into the pipes and reservoirs we should have built decades ago.
Water is life. And yet weāve watched it turned it into a payday.
Time to take it back.