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[…] By Michael Mason, for the London School of Economics (LSE) Middle East Centre. […]

Deven Upadhyay is the assistant general manager and executive officer for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which provides water to 19 million people. This week on the blog, Upadhyay describes how Met is handling California's recent precipitation whiplash—and shares some improvements that are in the works.

There will be a future while we might wish we didn't have to start from where we are. Plans are there to try to anticipate and change its shape. We have local Plans in England, Scotland and Wales (parts of the United Kingdom – though the future is not guaranteed). Speaking of England, we can … Continued

EuroCoin in October indicates quarterly growth rate of -0.67 (q/q). The Q3 flash estimate for Euro Area GDP was -0.1%. Figure 1: Euro Area GDP growth rate (not AR) (red circle), and EuroCoin (blue line), both q/q (not AR). Source: Banca d'Italia. From CEPR release: In October, €-coin dropped significantly (to -0.67, from -0.18 in […]

We think this is a fascinating little piece of digging by the BBC: Welsh Water has admitted illegally spilling untreated sewage at dozens of treatment plants for years.The admission came after the BBC presented the water company with analysis of its own data.One of their worst performing plants is in Cardigan in west Wales.The company has been spilling untreated sewage there into an environmentally protected area near a rare dolphin habitat for at least a decade.Welsh Water says it is working to tackle the problems and does not dispute the analysis, Our word. Gosh. Because of course the English water companies have been subject to a barrage of complaints recently, no? As a result of Feargal Sharkey, Surfers Against Sewage and all water bills in England are to rise substantially to pay for the higher standards they desire. Well, OK, maybe that should happen - as we said. If we all want cleaner water then we've all got to pay for it. But then the other part of the general analysis recently has been that it is private, for profit, water companies to blame for all of this. The dividends taken by the capitalists are the cause. Which does rather run into a slight problem, which is that investment in water rose upon privatisation. As we've also pointed out. Cardigan was particularly bad, spilling for more than 200 days each year from 2019-2022.The data provided to Prof Hammond showed that Cardigan almost never treated the amount of sewage it was supposed to.According to its permit it has to treat 88 litres a second before spilling - but had illegally spilled untreated sewage for a cumulative total of 1,146 days from the start of 2018 to the end of May 2023."This is the worst sewage works I've come across in terms of illegal discharges," he said.Oh. Well, that deals with the Richard Murphy critique, which is that the English water companies are environmentally insolvent and therefore must be nationalised. Not for profit and state run companies are worse so what do we do with them? There is that third example, Scotland. But that's difficult as Scottish Water is so efficient it seems not to monitor sewage overflows at all. A tad hyperbolic perhaps, but certainly very little.Which does - or at least should, to the extent that anyone is willing to be rational here - bring us back to that basic discussion of state ownership and privatisation. Not, not at all, which is the best system in theory. Nor shriekings about capitalism, nor public goods to be publicly provided. But which is the most efficient system at delivering what we actually desire? Clean water from the taps, with the least sensible amount of environmental pollution, at the best price possible for those two? We've also run a natural experiment here. England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland got different ownership and management systems as a result of privatisation. The spectrum was from most capitalist to least. The best results have also been along that same spectrum - England, Wales, Scotland, NI.We have, in fact, gone and tested those theoretical speculations. Done it with the water systems of entire nations. And guess what? Capitalism works best. Sure, well regulated capitalism and all that. But capitalism all the same.Isn't that interesting?

In recent years, record rainfall events nationally and internationally have served to underline the threat of surface water flooding, particularly to our cities and urban areas, writes Caroline Douglass, Environment Agency Executive Director of Flood and Coastal Risk Management. Examples …

Helen Wakeham, Director of Water Transformation at the Environment Agency delivered a keynote speech today (25 January) at the annual Coastal Futures Conference in London. Here, Helen shares her thoughts on the history and future of our estuarine, coastal, and …

December 14, 2023. Having regained a veto-proof majority in the state legislature, the N.C. General Assembly returned to a very aggressive effort to influence environmental rules in 2023. The annual Appropriations Act (House Bill 259), the N.C. Farm Act of 2023 (Senate Bill 582) and the Regulatory Reform Act of 2023 (House Bill 600) all […]

Many have argued that California's water rights laws are sorely in need of modernization. Is recent legislation taking a step in that direction? We spoke with two legal experts to find out.

Article written by Julie Foley, our Director of Flood Risk Strategy and Natural Adaptation, Environment Agency Surface water flooding happens when there is heavy rainfall and there is so much rainwater that it overwhelms drainage systems. Instead, rainwater collects over the …

Another day and there's another Professor Richard Murphy report. This one is "Cut the Crap" and it suffers from the usual problem, it's by Professor Richard Murphy. The claim that it's by the Corporate Accountability Network shouldn't be taken seriously - other than Professor Murphy there's no input from anyone other than the Fat Controller figurine on the model railway set. The claim, as laid out by The Guardian:England's water companies are "environmentally insolvent" because they do not have the financial means to raise the £260bn needed to deal with their sewage spillages, academic research has found.The report, by Prof Richard Murphy of the Corporate Accountability Network and Sheffield University, recommends nationalisation without compensation and raising the necessary funds through government ISAs for the public and higher charges for heavy water users.Even in just that brief summation we can see the usual Professor Murphy problem - as the report has been written entirely solo no external checks on basic logic have been made. The claim is made that the current system cannot finance the required charges. Therefore the system must be done away with. Then the suggestion is that more finance be made available. But if more finance must be made available then doesn't that mean that the current system could manage the finance - after all, more finance is to be made available? In more detail the report - sorry, Professor Murphy - looks at England and shrieks in horror at what is found. Without then doing the most basic of logical checks - OK, so what about other, similar systems? Like, say, Scotland where exactly the same problems of Victorian infrastructure and rising population are to be found? With that interesting difference that the water there is done by an already nationalised company. Well, the informed will know why Professor Murphy doesn't make that comparison. Because the situation in Scotland with sewage overflow is worse - they're even worse at monitoring it let alone preventing it. Given that state owned is worse than capitalist therefore it cannot be true that nationalisation is the answer - despite that being the preconceived conclusion that Professor Murphy desires to work toward. The muttering about capital, borrowings and dividends is an irrelevance. As Murphy says " total investment exceeding £91.5 billion had taken place over this period." which does seem like a fairly large amount. Given that the suggested new financing method is more borrowings (however tax privileged through ISAs) it cannot be that borrowing to invest is a problem. We cannot solve a problem of people borrowing to invest by then insisting that people borrow to invest.But here's the great gaping hole in the logic being used. Apparently, to make sure that the rivers are as clean as some campaigners would like would cost £260 billion. At which point everyone's insolvent because they can't raise £260 billion. But the correct response to £260 billion is that the rivers aren't going to become as clean as some campaigners would like. As we've said about Feargal Sharkey and Surfers Against Sewage. The costings of the demands - whoever pays for them, however - are such that they're a frivolous waste of societal resources. There are, close enough, 25 million households in England. Rounding a bit both ways, this makes £260 billion a charge of £10,000 per household. The only people to pay this £10,000 are households - whether through tax or water charges makes no difference. In order to clean up sewage overflows enough that folk may swim in the river at Hebden Bridge every household must pay £500 a year for 20 years (before any finance charges, recall). The rational answer from households is that the Hebdenites can go use a swimming pool like everyone else. This is not entirely frivolous either. Sure we'd all like a cleaner environment and we'd all, possibly, be willing to pay something to get it. But that much? For that little difference? Double everyone's water bill, at least, to make a marginal improvement in the rivers? Do note that not even Murphy claims this will solve all storm overflows. We already deal with 95%, perhaps 98%, of the crud and this £260 billion will only take that to perhaps 99%. There will still be sewage overflows even after this spending. So, will people be happy to be charged this much to make Feargal happy? No, no they won't and that's nothing, at all, to do with the ownership structure of the industry. It's that the target is wrong in and of itself. Then there is this issue of nationalisation which is political posturing at best. The claim is that water companies currently constrained by how much they may charge cannot solve this problem. Therefore nationalise them and then lift the control on what may be charged. But if the amount to be charged is to rise - as Professor Murphy insists it will have to - then the water companies are not environmentally insolvent, the basis of his claim that they must be nationalised. Further, the nationalisation doesn't change the basic fact that to meet the - too strict - targets then households must pay more. And to repeat, if charging more is the solution anyway then where's the insolvency? At which point we can become rational again rather than following the lacunae in Professor Murphy's logic. Take the occasional sight of reality rather than remain inside the ideological blinkers.We have two suggested systems here. Capitalist companies and a state owned water company. Either of those will, in order to meet those desired by some water standards, have to charge very much more than the current costs. OK. So, which of those two organisational structures should we use to deploy those greater funds to improve the water standards? Presumably we should use whichever system is more efficient at deploying funds to cleaning up the water. Which means using the English system of capitalist companies. Because the English companies have cleaned up the water more than the Scottish state owned company since the reorganisation at the time of the English privatisation. At lower cost too. In fact, we have four organisational models to look to. England capitalist, Wales a cooperative, Scotland state owned corporate and NI remaining with local councils. In terms of the three interesting measures, price, water quality in the taps, water quality in the rivers, the greatest improvements have come in England, followed in this order by Wales, Scotland and NI. The further away from a vibrant capitalism it gets the worse it gets that is. The solution therefore cannot be to abandon the vibrant capitalism, can it? The conspiratorially minded will now start asking why Professor Murphy does not do that comparison with the other water systems of the Home Nations and we'd have to say no, don't do that. There is no conspiracy here. Just the obvious reason. Comparisons across ownership structures are not made because everyone, even Professor Murphy, knows that such a comparison would hole the desired argument below the waterline. The Enmglish water companies are more efficient in the deployment of funds which is why they must never be compared with mutuals and state owned companies because that would destroy the argument to make them mutuals or state owned.But then as we said at the beginning, we've another Professor Richard Murphy report here, the problem being that it's a report by Professor Richard Murphy. Cut the crap, really.

Water in the basement is a common problem, especially in homes with finished basements. Basements are often built below grade, meaning the floor of the basement is below the level of the surrounding ground. This leaves the basement susceptible to …

In December 2020, a stretch of the River Wharfe at Cromwheel, Ilkley, in Yorkshire was designated a bathing water by Defra,the first section of a river in the country to become a bathing water. Yorkshire's Bathing Waters lead Claire Campbell …

Following last week's blog about soil testing, we're now looking at another area where we often find issues during a farm inspection – nutrient management planning. Around 30% of farms we inspected last year weren't able to provide evidence of …

As the primary cause of drought-which has detrimental consequences for agricultural production-climate change is a growing challenge for Syria.