In the absence of the Beckton plant, Thames Water will have to rely more on households to reduce their consumption. He has already asked bill payers to let their lawns go brown and their cars dirty ahead of an expected hosepipe ban in the capital.
“Bill payers will rightly question what value for money they have seen from the significant investment in this plant,” said Karen Gibbs of the Consumers’ Water Council.
Industry insiders say Thames Water has banked on placing the facility in an estuary, where it hopes to reduce operating costs because the seawater mixed with fresh water from the Thames will be less salty and therefore more difficult to process .
But the company failed to take into account that the water would have different salinity levels at different times of the day, making the plant unreliable for producing a stable supply of drinking water.
Even when the plant is operational, it will produce less potable water than Thames originally envisaged. The plant was originally designed to produce around 150 million liters of water a day – enough for 900,000 Londoners – but was forced to revise its forecast by a third earlier this year.
“This adjustment has been made based on experience and to avoid creating unrealistic expectations about the output that can be achieved over an extended period,” a Thames Water spokesman said.
The impetus for the east London plant was the 2012 London Olympics, which raised concerns that the influx of people during the hot summer months could be detrimental to the city’s water supply.
But the original plans, proposed in 2004, were blocked by Ken Livingston, the then Labor mayor of London, who argued the plant was unsustainable and unnecessary – despite the city being in one of the most water-stressed parts of the country.
When Boris Johnson became mayor in 2008, the plant was given the green light – construction was completed two years later.
Thames Water originally planned four more, but there is little sign of plans for a new plant.
It’s an experience recently repeated in Hampshire, where Southern Water was forced to abandon plans for a desalination plant last year. The area will be the first in the UK to come under the hose ban, which starts on Friday.
The plant was opposed by green groups, environmentalist Chris Packham and Julian Lewis, the local Labor MP.
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