Why is it illegal to collect rain water?

@peterlee Don't apply that to all.

It is not true of my supplier, Wessex Water, for a start but I dislike its being one of so many formerly-UK companies ownwed by foreigners - in this case the Malaysian hotels, concrete and hotels company YTL.

Anyway, did that loss of supply (which I think is illegal to leave not corrected), presumably due to a major engineering breakdown, stem from corruption as you allege, or from managerial incompetence and negligence? I do not condone either, but they are two totally different matters.

@ArishMell Try living without tap water for a week then. And no one giving a damn. I have a wife and family.

@peterlee I was not excusing it, let alone condoning it!

Of course it is wrong - but why did it happen?

You allege corruption but you need offer evidence for that - it could have been by neglect and incompetence but those are not corruption. They are simply very bad mismanagement. Has any action been taken against the senior managers who allowed the failure to last so long?

I can understand repairs might have taken a week but some form of temporary plant should have been installed to bypass the failed section, as rapidly as possible.

In such works it sometimes entails a large-diameter blue hose laid along the roadside. Recently a long length of new water-mains was laid in an area of the Mendip Hills, served I think by South-West Water. The work took a few months I think. I know from friends in the area that all residents and businesses affected were kept fully informed, bypass lines were fitted to each stretch being replaced; and breaks in supply were kept to a minimum in occurrence and duration, and notified in advance.

Now, that work was planned, but presumably your situation was unplanned, by breakdown. Even so, your company should still have taken basic action to restore piped supply as soon as possible, until the permanent plant was repaired.

If it did not, Ofwat should be asking very firmly, why not.


I shoukd add I have never worked, nor held shares, in that industry.

@Caz82 Why would it need to be purified?

@Caz82 @MrBrownstone Rainwater is pure

@ArtieKat Not at point of use, it isn't.

As it falls it is basically distilled water, apart from naturally containing a tiny amount of dissolved atmospheric carbon-dioxide (which is harmless), and is clean. Although it also lacks minerals that make normal tap-water more useful, perhaps better, than distilled water to drink.

Once it's washed the roof and gutters, and collected without treatment in a tank very hard to clean to a safe standard, it is not clean and becomes rapidly stagnant, rich in harmful bacteria, unsafe to drink and likely smelling and tasting "off".

@KentuckyFriedFloozy yes in some countries but I don’t remember which ones

@KentuckyFriedFloozy

@JackDaniels

@Ferise1 None of the states flat out prohibited rain water collecting. They just limit how and how much you can collect and what you use it for. Its usually to keep people from building giant rainwater collectors in arid regions and diverting all the limited rain fall from the environment. Some states just restrict you from using it for drinking water because of cistern contamination

@royalblue1193 it’s not as bad as I thought though, I heard this years ago and I never really researched it and I thought it was disgusting. But after some research it’s very rarely illegal.