Millions of households will have the hosepipe ban lifted before the end of summer after two months of rain returned rivers and reservoirs to normal levels.
Restrictions were due to last until Christmas after two dry winters left water levels at their lowest since 1976. But the Environment Agency has confirmed the risk of drought had been “significantly reduced” with no further action expected.
Provided dry conditions do not return, the ban is likely to be lifted before the Olympics next month.
Thames Water, which supplies almost nine million people across London and the Thames Valley, said it expected to remove the ban “sooner rather than later” with an update on water reserves due by the end of the month.
Questions
Answer with complete sentences.
- What is banned at the moment?
- When is the ban likely to be lifted?
- Why?
- When was the ban expected to continue until?
- How many people get their water from Thames Water?
- When will Thames Water next tell people its plans?
General
- Do you find it strange that a country as wet as Britain has a hosepipe ban?
- Should we pay for water according to how much we use?
- Do you think water is a scarce natural resource?
Answers
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Water is a scarce natural resource. However, there are too many people who do not realise water’s scarity until they are forced having limited access to water. For a lot of people it seems that there is water everywhere – at home, in public places and in the nature. Anytime when they turn on a tap there always has clean water runing out immediately. People get used to using water without thinking its costs and this leads to a huge amount of water being wasted every day. I think we should send some people in England to Gobi Desert and let them live there for at lease a couple of months so that when they come back they would appreciate how lucky they are for having plenty of water.
I don’t think water is scarce in general. In fact, I think that the amount of water in the world has not changed in several billion years. 97% of the water is salt water. 69% of the freshwater is in Greenland and Antartica, and less than 1% is in rivers and lakes. 99% of usable freshwater is groundwater. There’s certainly a lot of water – it just depends where it is: of course, in a desert it is scarce. Why should we send people to the Gobi desert – and water is never wasted – it just goes round and round!! I would send a lot of people to Australia – but that’s just because I don’t like them (and I think that’s your real reason, too).
1-it seems to be very hard to rely on seasonal prospects of any part of the world which is exampled above. The weather , seasons and any natural based thing are becoming changeable that I were not surprised as reading the passage. I did not find strange the ban of the hosepipe in the island like Britain .it was most likely not to see a drought risk by the last year otherwise the government should have taken some steps to reduce this risk.
2-Of course we should. By doing that we will help to provide much better service.Besides, this may be promote awareness on how the water is important for us and going extinct.
3-Unfortunately, because of us, yes it is a scarce natural resource. And some research have conducted in the last years clearly shows that water would be a cause of wars in the next because of droughts.
I’m not sure about your opinions Ahmad: “extinct” applie to living creatures not water – and the total amount of water never changes! Some strang euse of English here eg “some research have conducted” why have? It should be “some research that was conducted” – try to be careful about grammar.