I'd guess Bewl water is overflowing. It absolutely bucketed down with rain in July across most of Kent, and Bewl was in the heart of the wet region. 

Thanks for that David. It shows at least from the Norwegian study that even treated effluent is still rich in compounds that shouldn't be there.

And then concentrated in times of low flow. Near enough 50% of the watercourse flow is treated effluent in these dry conditions. 

If this knowledge was more generally understood, would it make leaks in potable water pipes look like a storm in a teacup, perhaps. Although it might seem like heresy to say so, the water that leaks will in many cases find its way back to places that need the water, i.e. streams and other places. 

Well, there's the urban myth that every drop of water passing Gloucester in the river Severn has been through seven people.

Much of what's stored in Bewl Water is pumped from the upper Medway catchment, where it's been drier, and normally pumping is confined to the winter months anyway.

https://wikishire.co.uk/wiki/Bewl_Water 

And ...

The catchment area of Bewl Water is 2077.5 hectares (20.775 square kilometers) according to Data.gov.uk. This is the area of land that drains into the reservoir. The surface area of the reservoir itself is 309 hectares (3.09 square kilometers) according to the UK Lakes Portal. If every drop of water went into the reservoir, a foot of rain would raise Bewl by six feet; I should think it's less than half that in summer conditions when rain gets intercepted by vegetation.

I did a crude experiment when I was teaching A level Geography to check a text book statement that it took half an inch of rain in high summer before significant quantities reached the ground, being intercepted by leaves (and some of that would be taken up by vegetation growth). I thought that seemed an over estimate, but the experiment suggested it was about right.

The experiment consisted of assembling a pile of vegetation on a plastic sheet, and getting a sixth former on a step ladder to pour water onto the pile from a watering can.😂😂 

It was said years ago, the water used for water supply, had been passed by the Management.

And double that for Londoners so I've heard...

Fairweather would know the true statistics.

Grass is starting to look a bit yellow in places again after greening up in late July. Only 6mm so far in August. 

Interesting. A large lake compared with the catchment size. I don't think the upper Medway catchment has been particularly dry though. Perhaps not quite as wet as along the foot of the downs towards Ashford, but still in very much the wet area. I had 201mm in July at the vineyard but that's up in the hills with orographic effects. Of the catchment got, conservatively, 100mm i.e. 4 inches during July then by your calculations that would be 2 feet before losses from evaporation and transpiration. 

What Kent hasn't had though, since the first of the 3 deluges in July, is very dry soils that need recharging before anything gets into runoff. Parts of the downs and weald were mudbaths by mid July and some of the rivers were visibly in spate.

That's not the case. In reality the soil here was only moist enough to turn muddy for part of a day, and even that was just the top mm or so - it's been solid as a rock before and after. 

Not all of Kent saw the ridiculous amounts of rainfall that the Canterbury area had!

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/anomacts/2025/7/2025_7_Rainfall_Actual.gif 

(For comparison we had 70mm here, albeit the shading shows 75mm or more.)

The high Weald (which contains Bewl water) was one of the wet areas though. You are in a notably desert-like microclimate being at low level and surrounded by estuary. 

Haha. Listen to Frank Turner (Winchester boy):

https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858871730/ 

Clearly, my plan to include drought reports within the monthly precipitation threads in order to prevent a separate drought thread from having to be created on this forum has very much backfired a bit as this thread has still ended up being created anyway. Since my philosophy is to go by when this forum's members want rather than what I want though, I am happy enough to honour that and so, my weekly reports from SEPA will be posted on here from now on whilst this thread continues to be active.

On that note, this week's water scarcity report has just been released by SEPA and this doesn't make for very good reading. There has been very little in the way of rainfall in the past week away from those areas which don't actually need it and because of that, river and groundwater levels continue to be very low, with the worst of those conditions occurring in Fife and north Aberdeenshire.

I have been saying for some time now that unless we start to see some significant rainfall very soon, our water scarcity status here in Edinburgh and elsewhere is only going to be upgrade and that has now very sadly come to the far as the water Scarcity level in Edinburgh and the Borders has now been upgraded from early warning status to alert status. As long as we continue to not see any significant rainfall, that situation is only going to get even worse with further upgrades in that status likely to occur over time.

Even the relatively wet west of Scotland isn't completely immune from all of that as the River Clyde catchment area which includes Glasgow (which is normally the wettest city in Scotland on average) has had its status upgraded from normal to early warning status along with Thurso in the north of Scotland.

Apart from that, the statuses on the rest of Scotland which I haven't mentioned here continues to remain unchanged for now, but with further upgrades looking very likely as long as the predominately dry weather continues.

Yes, well these sort of things are trotted out regularly. The thing is London gets a lot of its water from underground aquifers (30-40%) and of course, like everywhere else in the Country from its rivers. So the further downstream you are from towns the more people it will have passed through. But that's not really any more relevant than saying a countryside water supply has passed through the run off of millions of acres of farm land which potentially is more harmful. Water treatment in the UK is highly regulated and even now with the nasty private Water Companies I don't think the testing levels have fallen and they are incredibly stringent and the same everywhere. Very strict EU standards were brought in and we haven't dropped them - yet. That's one bit of being in the EU that annoyed me, the UK Drinking Inspectorate were unbelievably stringent but I'm not sure all EU Nations regulators were. The water at the tap is largely the same however many people it passed through. There will be regional differences , mainly due to the geology but the chances of it making you ill are virtually negligible, although severe droughts and high temperatures stress the system, especially from the microbiological standpoint.

It's a great paper and demonstrates what has always been known for almost all pollutants - dilution is one of the most effective forms of treatment. It also brings us back to the age old premise in pollution law that the "polluter pays". This seems to have been forgotten to some extent in recent years and we are paying less I fear in money and more in the consequences to our health risk with these newish biochemical pollutants. It should never be forgotten that we, the users of these anti-biotics and in fact all other pollutants are put in by us, the consumer. Not the Government, not the Water Companies. There should be more concern and regulation of the disposal at source including hospitals where just chucking it down the sink or toilet simply isn't good enough. It is incredibly difficult and expensive to monitor these compounds at these micro levels. The main source of these AGRs will be through our own urine. Thankfully there are intensive physical and biological processes at the Water Treatment Plants (as opposed to the WWTPs) that will considerably reduce these post abstraction but they will still end up in the drinking water. We are grappling with treating the effect - not the cause. We can use microplastics as another example. All of us over recent decades were happy to take advantage of their benefits with no thought as to the long term consequences and now we are acting- like most environmental concerns it seems, we are too late.

I was just looking back. We have had 9 days here this summer with temperatures over 30C. It is now three weeks again since our last rain and the cracks in the lawn are widening and deepening and the green tinge that the mid July rain brought has faded. Surprisingly, this current heat wave has produced just one day over 30C so far . 

Yes, I don't know what it has been with Canterbury this year. All of the streamers seem to not only track through there but intensify as well. I must look up their exact rainfall figures for July and August because we had 40mm in July and less than 1mm so far in August. Canterbury is 35 miles S.E. of here but there is a fairly wide part of the Thames Estuary between us. Such a difference!

That’s a good read fairweather. I would guess that out of all of us on TWO, you have the deepest knowledge of water and in particular potable water. My knowledge is basic, gained through working with two water companies before the fisheries parts were passed to what’s now the Environment Agency. One thing that sticks in my mid was the cat and mouse games played with the polluters and enforcement agency. Imagine a factory deliberately releasing pollution at night, hoping there would be no one around to catch them. But they were caught with an automatic sampler placed in a sewer. But as you say we are all responsible whether from contraceptives flushed through urine to some of the complex medications many of us take. The tip of the proverbial iceberg.

My own thoughts which could well be wrong are that we’ll find the air is pretty good at cleaning itself, or at least flushing out the toxins. The water and more so the oceans are going to be a lot harder to clean up. Maybe it will be a falling human population that helps us. But with this ‘blessing’ it means fewer minds to come up with solutions. AI to the rescue?

It has been incredibly dry in this part of Dorset for the last few months. More than Essex by a long way. I can say with no hesitation now that the grass is as burnt up as it was in that summer of '76. What little rainfall we've had has on occasion meant a slight greening recovery, soon to fall back to a crispy layer again. 

The weather models suggest a wet autumn, or some do, from what I've read here. I sincerely hope that is true. 

We can use microplastics as another example. All of us over recent decades were happy to take advantage of their benefits with no thought as to the long term consequences and now we are acting- like most environmental concerns it seems, we are too late.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/minister-hugely-disappointed-talks-agree-121055225.html 

What is your summer rainfall total so far? I know my daughter got some heavy downpours in Christchurch a couple of weeks ago but I think a lot of this year's rainfall has been extremely localised, like where Canterbury has had several long spells of heavy rain yet just 10-30 miles away virtually none.

Down to the last few drops of water! 

I don't know. I'm looking at rain gauges automatic and manual so I can record how much falls in future. I have a thermometer though that's showing 29.9C today (just had a look). Again ad infinitum this summer. It used to be noteworthy seeing these temps but not any more.

The showers bledur mentioned recently near him never produced anything here. I think he's not so far from Bransgore where the latest fire began with an out of control bonfire. Your daughter will certainly have heard about that one.

https://www.hantsfire.gov.uk/incident/large-field-fire-near-bransgore-spreads-to-nearby-property/ 

There is a building site across the road from me with a few acres of long parched grass on it that's a current fire hazard before it becomes a housing estate. A lot of gorse close by too. Scary. 

You could fill it perhaps with a hose? Does it have a leak too?

No leak, and I'd rather not use tap water in it. 

7 miles away from Canterbury here - none at all in August so far (bar a few spits and spots which didn't even dampen the ground). The 70mm in July seems like a distant memory now, and the hazels, dog roses and viburnum are starting to shed leaves here, while the cherry tree in my garden looks the worse for wear - the leaves have gone droopy, for want of a better word. In other words though the reprieve in July was nice, we're back to the summer norm now.

(Last year stood out, the grass only started going yellow a couple of times, briefly, and the trees stayed fully in leaf right through to the end of autumn. I miss the old days when that was the norm!)