Its obviously a day for water stories......
I think Peter (with his Civ. Eng. qualifications) could volunteer as project manager for this one from Reuters.
London is going to build a £200 million desalination plant to produce 140 million litres of drinking water a day.
In the meantime 25% (see below) of all of London's potable water is still lost through leakage. They reckon that at least 50% of London's water consumption could be saved by the simple promotion (a small financial household incentive would surely have been a better idea?) of rain water harvesting systems etc. (especially as climate change experts forecast that summer rainfall will actually increase over current levels.)
On the basis of other current grand projects initiated by our really sensible government, the final cost will, of course, be at least £450 million.
Oh, "the plant will only run on bio-diesel". So that's OK then because that's nice and green.
Oh, and its "only going to be used intermittently" - whatever that's supposed to mean! (If there is only a peak demand intermittment requirement, then why not sort out the current problems instead of throwing a massive project at a minor set of problems?)
(Just a thought, but, looking at current climatic trends, as most of London is likely to be at, or even below, sea level in 40 or 50 years time, maybe its not such a bad idea after all? [If they build it on 30 Metre stilts!])
That 25% of potable water currently lost via leakage amounts to the insignificant figure of some 702 million litres per day!! (Don't despair, it used to be a lot worse than that!)
Addendum:
Here's The Guardian's take on the proposals - "Green groups condemn water plant go-ahead."
Whilst, rather surprisingly, Christian Today heads up its article on the subject with "London Fights Climate Change to get Clean Water to Booming Population"
2 comments:
We really are biting this prevention vs. cure bullet today, eh?
Just for the record, as I am going to be dissed for this for the rest of my life, I got a BSc. Civ Eng Hons (just)!
Thing is, I was more into Brunelian construction (aced the first year when it was all practical stuff; ran into trouble when it was spending all 3rd, er, 4th, er 5th year remembering computer anyalytic formulae that wouldn't fit inside my watch strap. Plus the booze and girls thing). My balsa bridge still holds the record for carrying the most load!
My mission now is more critical of (daft) missions than mission critical.
What would be interesting is how many million litres of lost potable water that 25% represents. I'm guessing it would make an interesting bookend to the 140M that a highly energy intensive (and hence emissions-producing) process would represent in comnparison to, oh, I don't know, plugging the waste. This is under Ken's watch, right? I wonder if Boris is keen, too?
I must again point at Leo H's Final call, where this issue in the Middle East and round the Med is discussed.
No, he couldn't see it either.
It's like putting the aircon on full to cope with the increased temperatures of climate change (GW variety). That's it... solar powered a/c! Fancy a crack? The sunnier it is, the better it works!
Desalination, unless using solar or other viable (hee-hee) alt.eng sources, gets a very poor enviROI from me, I'm afraid.
And I hate to burst your bubble, but if the desalination plant is underwater, won't it get a bit brackish? But then they could blow £200M on defences to keep water out of the plant that makes, er... water!
Current leakage figure now updated onto the main post. Don't know about it representing an interesting bookend - it's more of a huge gable end in comparison!
You mentioned that this is under Ken's watch. Yes, indeed it is, and, unsurprisingly, he has been fighting it all the way.
Don't feel dissed at all, there's nowt wrong with Brunelian style construction. The vast majority of constructions that he designed and/or built are still in current use.
Solar powered A/C? It's already in hand. We've designed and are now selling an earth cooling kit which can be used with our larger SolarVenti models which will reduce the incoming summer air temperature by 5C to 10C.
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