Interesting piece in The Guardian

The government has “no idea” how much water is being taken from rivers and groundwater, according to an Environment Agency (EA) whistleblower, as swathes of England remain in drought despite recent heavy rainfall.

The whistleblower told the Guardian that the EA’s regulation of water abstraction points for farms, small businesses and private water supplies was “absolutely pointless” because most were not metered and the monitoring that did take place was unreliable.

Abstractions were monitored on a rota system but the agency’s inspections were a “waste of time”, said the whistleblower, because, in most cases, the abstracting individual or organisation would report how much water they had removed based on what they had noted down on a particular day – and “they have to be taken at their word”.