Exclusive: most extraction points for rivers and groundwater not metered, so government relies on users’ honesty
The government has “no idea” how much water is being taken from rivers and groundwater, according to an Environment Agency (EA) whistleblower, as swathes of England remain in drought despite recent heavy rainfall.
The whistleblower told the Guardian that the EA’s regulation of water abstraction points for farms, small businesses and private water supplies was “absolutely pointless” because most were not metered and the monitoring that did take place was unreliable.
Abstractions were monitored on a rota system but the agency’s inspections were a “waste of time”, said the whistleblower, because, in most cases, the abstracting individual or organisation would report how much water they had removed based on what they had noted down on a particular day – and “they have to be taken at their word”.
“They’re not going to log an illegal number,” said the insider. “That’s why there’s so little enforcement on water abstraction, they’re not going to dob themselves in.”
The abstraction licensing regime dates back to the 1960s and successive governments have pledged to reform it for more than a decade.
According to the EA’s figures for 2018, the latest year for which data is available, there were 18,193 abstraction licences in force in England, when, it estimated, 10.4m cubic metres was removed from non-tidal surface and groundwaters.
The Guardian asked the EA for the total...
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