Water waste

In the Ham&High last week residents raised their concerns about leaks from Thames Water mains pipes in roads like East Heath Road (see photo left). It’s not just in Hampstead but also in Highgate where you can regularly see streets gushing with water from leaking pipes. Swain's Lane, near Highgate Cemetery, is always soaking wet.

I work with various community groups on food growing in Camden. We do our best to collect rainwater and to only use that for watering our food growing sites, but occasionally, when we run out of rainwater, we need to use a hosepipe to give the young fruit trees, fruit bushes and other demonstration crops a good soaking. Yet we can’t because Thames Water has imposed a hosepipe ban.

It cuts me to the quick to see water gushing out of roads when we can’t water our food growing sites.

However it’s perhaps worth reminding Conservative councillor Chris Knight - one of those who flagged up the Hampstead leaks - that it was the Tory party which privatised the water companies and made them into a law unto themselves. It used to be the case that utilities coordinated their hole digging with councils, but not now. The privatised utilities dig holes where you really don’t want them – like in a stretch of road which has only just been resurfaced. And then when you do want them to mend leaks in roads or sort out exposed wiring in street-side electrical cabinets, they do nothing.

Four years of Boris Johnson as Mayor of London has done nothing to improve the situation.

If I understand the coalition government correctly, their solution to the worst recession for more than 70 years is the same as their solution for drought and climate change - more privatisation, less democratic control over the public works and less funding for local government. Sounds like a recipe for more leaks, more waste and more unemployment to me.