Why are our water companies so crap?

Despite Britain’s reputation for rainfall, we are preparing to import water from Norway – a deal that highlights this country’s incompetence

It’s pouring with rain outside. The roof lights above my head are getting a hammering, the stream is turning into a dark and muddy river and water is pooling in the yard. A friend in Warwickshire has sent me a photo of the road outside his front door, currently a raging torrent, and a newsflash has popped up on my phone to show a platform at Birmingham New Street under water.
After what felt like two and a half days of dry summer, normal service resumes. Britain is under a deluge; football stadiums are flooded; and there are, as I write, 67 flood warnings currently flashing on the dashboard of the Environment Agency.
So maybe it’s apt – this is modern Britain after all – that on Friday, news leaks (lol) of a deal between Southern Water and Norway to ship drinking water to south-east England.
Thus, when the next drought occurs – which at the moment, I grant you, feels unlikely – their 4.7 million customers can rely on a daily pour of 45 million litres courtesy of the glacial waters of the Geirangerfjord, the Aurlandsfjord, the Naeroyfjord, and the Lysefjord.
And I suggest you attempt to say those words because it will render you exactly as you should be with this news: that is, speechless.
As the saying goes, “water, water everywhere nor any drop to drink.” Nor bathe in, nor water the plants with, nor add to your beer casks, nor hose into your paddling pool. For such is our incompetence that we now compete internationally for the title of ‘Most Stupidly Administered Country in the World’.
And just as Sir Keir Starmer parades his newly elected self on the international stage and tells the world, as he informed us followers on Instagram this morning: “We are returning the UK to responsible global leadership”, our actual bosses – I’m thinking NHS administrators, rail and road infrastructure leaders – tell the real story.
In the words of Southern Water’s managing director for water, Tim McMahon: “We’ve adapted our plans to deliver an environmentally resilient solution that meets the requirements of the Environment Agency’s abstraction licence reductions.” Which sends me scrabbling to the glossary.
Maybe you agree that the EA’s abstraction licence reductions are vital. (In layman’s terms, they are part of a plan to protect Britain’s fish, rivers and other wildlife habitats by limiting the amount of water firms are allowed to abstract.) Or you think that the weather is a red herring, since it will take years before our creaking water infrastructure has been overhauled and we have a better way of storing rainwater.
But that’s not what Greenpeace is saying. Their chief scientist, Doug Parr, lays the blame squarely at the door of Southern Water, which, he says, has neglected its own infrastructure “for decades”. 
And he’s not happy with the plan for water to be shipped over in giant Tetra-Pak style cartons, as this would cause “permanent damage to local ecosystems” in Norway. Indeed, the tourists on their cruise ships, not to mention the auks, puffins and sheathbills, might be wondering where the hell their water has gone.
So why can’t we store it here when it rains? As it seems to do. All the time. There are examples of some good practice with, for example, Wessex Water, managing supplies in my patch of West Somerset, bucking the trend with considerable competence, and even employing (locally based) humans who answer their telephones.
A friend of mine once bought a property on the Western Cape of South Africa. It was the former home of a leading politician and one day he discovered a secret: a very long pipe that brought water from nearby Cape Town that had been used to irrigate his thirsty vines.
If a corrupt politician can find water for his wine in Africa, surely a British utility company can contain, manage or at least blag some of the wet stuff from its drenched neighbours rather than raping the fjords of Norway.