Britons face water limits

Press, 22 July 1976, Page 8

Britons face water limits

NZPA-Reuter I.ondor Despite heavy thundershowers that gave parts of London their first drenching in a long summer of drought. Londoners were told yesterdax that they faced a ban on the use of hoses and sprinklers. The rharnes Water Authority, which supplies 900 million gallons of water a day to 12 million consumers m the London region, said the ban would take effect from I a.tn. on Saturday, and would continue indefinitely. It is the first such ban Londoners have known for 18 years, and is the latest effect of Europe’s worst recorded drought, a freakish lack of rain that has shrivelled crops and drained reservoirs. “Our reservoirs are at 60 per cent of normal ca pacity,” said a Thames Water Authroity spokesman. “What we need is a month of good old British drizzle." That level is high compared with other parts of England, Wales, 1 rance, and elsewhere in Europe. Rainfall in the affected areas is two thirds below normal this year, and torrential downpours on

Tuesday amounted to a drop in the sun-baked water-hole.

About 50,000 people in south Wales were learning to cope with no water at all for 13 hours every night in the most severe restriction in Britain, imposed by the Welsh National Water Authority on Monday after one reservoir ran dry and others were reduced to cloudy trickles. In the North of England 100 British Army troops joined fireman in battling a fire that was spreading fast on the Yorkshire Moors.

“The whole place is like a tinderbox,” said a fire official.