Why do people think that water leaking from supply pipes is 'lost'?

Question

This always puzzles me.
In the South East of the UK, where water shortages are at their worst, everyone always seems to blame leaky water supply pipes. Where do they think the leaking water goes?
Over 70% of water supply in that area is from boreholes, pumping water from the aquifer... where the leaking water ends up!
I know it is horribly innefficient to pour treated drinking water into the ground, but it is not 'lost'. Why don't the water companies argue their case..... or am I wrong?

Answer 1

I don't believe it all hits the aquifer again. A very large amount will seep into sewers or head straight into rivers, where it heads for the sea - and to get it back again you have to wait for rain.

Although what you say is partly true of the London basin, not all water supplies are dominated by groundwater. Any area with hills around will favour gravity sources (reservoirs in places where it rains). They're great, but you only have so much catchment and so much rain.

Huge swathes of England and even some parts of Scotland rely on river pumping, which is the worst possible source of water, in terms of treatment requirement, cost and immediate environmental impact.

Plus if your water is river, and your area is agricultural, standby for nitrate removal coming on stream near you. If you think treatment is expensive now...

Answer 2

It's a question of economics.
It costs money to draw water from the ground and treat it.After that it's considered a "product".Any product that doesn't reach its intended destination is considered a loss.
That water may indeed make it's way back into the aquifer,but it has to be extracted and purified again without ever having been exploited.That means you're doing the same work twice.No corporate entity wants to waste money duplicating effort.
By the way....excuse me for sounding ignorant,but how do you have water shortages in the southeastern portion of the UK? Isn't it always raining over there?

Answer 3

In the summer with the heat... especially how summers are turning out lately, a lot of leaked water evaporates and will fall again as rain - only not in the right places or at the right time.

I still don't believe there is a shortage, it is more the water companies refusal to use other sources for our water due to costs to them.

Answer 4

The water clearly isn't lost in the real sense of the word, but it is lost to the household supply , thus reducing the net efficiency of the water purification and pumping systems. I suppose its a bit like a trawler with holes in the net - the fish that escape are not lost, but are put beyond use.

Answer 5

You have a point, but it's not compelling.

If you have a tank of treated water, and then you have leaks in the pipes to the households, that treated water is "lost" in delivery to the household.

True, it's not "lost" to the earth - it's in a different location, but then it has to be found again and treated again.

But you already know this.

Answer 6

The water benefits are lodt to those who stored it, and not all water makes it back to the sourse do to evaporation or consumption by creatures. Yep your wrong.

Answer 7

Because it's not getting where it's supposed to go.