Credit: Harry Grout
Stephen has asked Thames Water why a multi-million pound desalination plant in Beckton, which was built to supply Londoners with water during a drought, has been shut down until next year.
The Beckton Water Treatment Works in east London can draw 100m litres a day from the River Thames. It opened in 2010 with the capacity to pipe drinking water into 400,000 homes in London.
But Thames Water has admitted the high-tech plant is offline and unable to be used before 2023. In a statement, the company said: “Due to further necessary planned work the plant is currently out of service. Our teams are working as fast as possible to get it ready for use early next year, to achieve protection to our supplies if we were to have another dry winter.”
Stephen said he was puzzled by Thames Water’s decision to mothball the plant after the driest July on record. “The plant was built in my constituency at great expense to Thames Water customers twelve years ago," he said.
"It was built to help out in a crisis exactly like the one we seems to be heading into at the moment with drought conditions. It's expensive to run, it take a lot of electricity which at the moment is very expensive. It may be that Thames Water does not want to pay the costs of running it at the moment," he added.
Thames Water is advising customers to cut down water usage by taking shorter showers, turning taps off when brushing teeth and using watering cans, rather than hoses in the garden.