A record-breaking heat wave in July literally roasted the apples on their branches, but Philip Taylor, who runs the farm with his nephew, now has more to worry about. The soil under the trees is cracking from the drought — they’ve had so little rain this spring and summer. Even last winter, when rainwater is usually stored in the ground to keep it moist for months, it just wasn’t wet enough. England last month had its driest July since 1935 and the south of the country, including Lathcoats Farm, received just 17% of the average rainfall for the month, according to the UK Met Office. There is no significant amount of rain on the horizon either. Water levels in reservoirs are dropping rapidly and rivers are drying up. Even the River Thames that runs through London has shrunk, its first 5 miles dried up and disappeared. Thirteen rivers monitored by the Environment Agency are at their lowest levels ever recorded. The climate crisis, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, is making hot weather, drought and flooding more frequent and severe in the UK, and the warmer the planet gets, the worse these effects will be. But for farmers of thirsty crops like apples, there’s no substitute for rain straight from the sky. “Apple farming won’t work if we have summers like this every year,” Taylor told CNN at his farm, 40 miles northeast of London. “Our access to water at the moment is purely from the grid. To give the apple trees enough water to produce a decent crop would be very expensive.” Fortunately, Taylor has other means of income. His family have turned the farm into an attractive place to visit, with a cafe and farm shop selling Lathcoats apple juice, fresh produce, organic bread and cakes. People also come here to pick their own fruit, making for a fun day out, especially for young children. He and his nephew also sell soft fruit, such as berries and plums, which can be watered. But even that water is becoming scarce, and they can’t afford to take some of the measures that larger farms take to protect against extreme weather. “So in terms of what we’re doing about it, we’re kind of concerned,” Taylor said. “We might just get out of growing apples. Certainly, we’ll look at what varieties we could plant in the future. Some would be more tolerant of these temperatures than some of the traditional English ones we’re growing now.”
3 billion liters of water are lost to leaks every day
Banning tires forces people to find less wasteful ways to replenish their gardens and wash their cars. Filling a rowboat, as some English people do on hot days, is also prohibited in many areas. But it’s not just consumption that’s a problem, or even the lack of rain – the UK’s infrastructure is several hundred years old and particularly leaky. In England and Wales, 3.1 billion liters of water – enough to fill 1,240 Olympic-sized swimming pools – is lost through leaks every day. “There’s a real lack of respect for the water that we have, this really, really precious resource,” Hannah Klock, a climatologist and hydrologist at the University of Reading, told CNN. “We drink it, we use it to grow our food, and yet we’re still letting it leak everywhere. That’s one of the biggest problems. The water companies are just letting it leak — they’ve really dropped the ball there.” Water UK, which represents 12 major water companies across the country, said much had already been done to plug the leaks. “Companies are increasingly putting innovation and technology at the center of these efforts,” the agency said in a statement to CNN. “Smart grids, smart sensors, satellite technology and drones are all part of the arsenal being developed to detect and repair leaks faster than ever before.” Companies represented by Water UK also plan to invest £14 billion ($17 billion) in reservoirs and schemes to transport water across the country, “enough to feed 10 million people”, so it can be saved for particularly dry periods like this. Another issue is that only around half of homes in England and Wales have water meters, which allow companies to charge customers based on actual usage. The rest simply pay what the companies estimate a home of their size can use. The wider UK has the highest per capita water consumption in the whole of Europe, consuming more than 140 liters per day. The measurement has been proven to reduce water consumption by more than 20%. Without them, there is little incentive to reduce usage. Cloke said water companies might not want to expand metering, which could cut into their profits, assuming people would be more careful with their consumption. “Water companies will want to make money selling water, so it’s in their best interest to keep selling, even when there are restrictions,” Klock said. “We haven’t got it right, but the water companies don’t have the incentive to do the right thing, environmentally speaking, and that goes for pollution and floods as well as droughts and leaks. It’s business as usual.” The UK’s Center for Ecology and Hydrology warned on Wednesday that the drought conditions now affecting much of the country could last until at least October. The center is looking only a few months ahead, and there are concerns that the country could experience a second consecutive dry winter even next year. This could be devastating, not only for households, but also for food security, already undermined by Russia’s war in Ukraine and drought in other parts of Europe. It would also push food prices even higher, fueling inflation that is already painful for millions of people in the country as mortgage rates and rents rise and energy prices soar. As Taylor told CNN from his farm, it’s one thing after another. “It all happened at once,” he said. “You could start with Brexit and continue to Ukraine and post-Covid. And now climate change is really starting to hurt.”
The Garden of England withers
On the other side of London, down south, the English county of Kent is known as the Garden of England for its green rolling hills, fertile land and orchards that supply the nation with strawberries, apples and pears. It is also a place that attracts those with green thumbs, who move here and grow large gardens in their homes. David and Margaret Miller have lived in their Edenbridge, Kent home for about 40 years. The couple showed CNN photos of what their garden once looked like — a verdant oasis of geraniums, azaleas, dahlias, cannas and echinacea plants. They also took out several certificates to show their accolades from the local Edenbridge in Bloom gardening competition, which they have won many times. Now their front lawn is dry and brown from the lack of rain. Some of their dahlias haven’t bloomed at all in the heat, and the pink echinacea flowers are completely wilted, their petals drooping. The couple decided to try watering the flowers and plants they care for the most. Although not yet subject to a tire ban, they have turned to watering holes “to do the right thing,” Margaret Miller said. This made what was once a 30 minute job twice as long. In this heat, they sometimes need to water their chosen plants twice a day to keep them alive. It’s no easy task for David, who is 84 and suffers from vertigo, or Margaret, 80, who has problems with her hip. And their garden is everything to them. A hobby and a refuge that got them through the worst of the pandemic. “When you see them all wilting in the heat, you feel sad,” Margaret Miller said of her plants. “Because, over a period of time, you have nurtured them.” She agrees that people should conserve water as a precious resource, but is frustrated that her garden has to suffer while the country loses so much to leaks every day. “I feel very cross about it, because then they come up with a reason like, ‘Oh, we have a sewage system that goes back several hundred years and it’s not the water companies’ fault.’ But I would think that, in this day and age, they have equipment that can tell where those leaks are and fix them,” he said. “I’m sure they’re making a lot of money, so why don’t they plow through it again? It makes me stop.”
