MORE than 20 years after the fierce political battles over the flooding of Queen’s Valley, water resources, their cost, availability and infrastructure remain potentially sensitive subjects.

The creation of the controversial new reservoir in the valley has, in the intervening years, undoubtedly contributed to a reduction in the frequency of the water shortages and warnings which used to be a much more familiar part of Island life. However, no one can legislate for the weather and now we find ourselves once again facing the threat of serious problems to come.

The price to pay for the glorious autumn we have enjoyed this year is the prospect of Jersey’s first official drought for 20 years. Less than a quarter of the average rainfall for October and November, usually the wettest months, has been recorded this year and pictures of the Island’s depleted reservoirs tell their own unsettling story.

Against such a background, it hardly needs saying that today’s stern warnings from Jersey Water about the need to conserve water should be taken very seriously. Just because we have become accustomed to drought as a thing of the past does not mean that it cannot or will not happen again.

The list of steps which householders and businesses can take to mitigate the threat, ranging from having showers instead of baths and only running full dishwasher loads to car-washing with buckets and checking for wasteful leaks, amount to simple common sense.

A united and positive community response to Jersey Water managing director Howard Snowden’s exhortations will go at least some way towards enabling us to avoid the worse options he forecasts in the event of continued dry weather, including statutory restrictions and even the costly importation by tanker of the water needed for survival.

Understandably, water is one of those things we have tended to take for granted. The current problems, and potential future crisis, are salutary reminders of how wrong it is to do so, especially at a time when the protection and distribution of its supply is starting to be recognised as one of mankind’s greatest global challenges for the 21st century.

Closer to home, water is a literally vital piece in the jigsaw of neglected public resources and infrastructure which the new Council of Ministers has inherited and will now set out to review with an overdue sense of urgency.