From Charmaine Noel.
WHILE staying at my mother’s house this week, I read with concern that Islanders could have to pay for tankers of water from Norway as Jersey is now so short of water. Importing water in this way is a desperate measure and will be expensive and is clearly not sustainable.

The optimum growth policy in Jersey has been allowed unchecked for the last 50 years. So now the current population can no longer be supported by the Island’s rainfall; this is no surprise and should be dealt with swiftly if the matter is not to worsen with global warming.

Here is how to deal with this crisis.
Saving water is the key. It will also save you all money. Every house needs to install three water butts. Only these should be used for garden watering.
Tap water which is expensive to purify and collect and pump from main supplies should not be used.

If the water butts run out then use old dish water and shower/bath water should be recycled.

Install water meters in every home, including old properties. This should be mandatory in Jersey as in Germany. In England water meters are being installed in all new properties. Once we had installed our water meter our water bills were reduced by £150 each year.

Install rain water harvesting systems – our tank is under our decking and is hidden from view, we flush all our toilets using ‘grey water’ collected from the roof. This costs only electricity and saves us a lot of money.

It also crucially saves water plus our waste water bill is lower as we have less runoff.

This is nothing new it has been used in Germany and in England for a long time. Why has no one thought to install them in Jersey where there is a very high population in a very small place with finite, limited natural resources? Importing water is so unsustainable.

As a practising professional ecologist and chartered landscape architect, I write an environmental blog which has all the information you need on how and why we should all be saving water; see landvision blog.co.uk