If we, the public, must learn to live with water scarcity and teach ourselves to behave more sensibly, so too must our rulers. The Environment Agency, which licences all water abstraction, is already thought to be careless in its approach in some areas, and especially heedless of the implications of excessive abstraction for our river systems. What so often happens is that new houses are built, and once they exist the Agency feels unable to check the abstraction necessary to provide them with unlimited water, even when local river flows and levels are causing alarm. The Agency ought properly to be leading the band for conservation, making the case for matching building development to available resources, arguing the case for responsible water management, instead of allowing itself to be bludgeoning or blackmailed into supporting the demand-led practices of the past, which are simply no longer sustainable.
It is no exaggeration to say that the South-East of England is in danger of drying out, in consequence of water shortages, steadily worsening traffic congestion and pollution, and the ever-rising tide of household waste. In the years ahead, contending with this reality and its implications will be a major challenge for our society, and also of course for CPRE.
I wish that I had been delivering less of a tale of woe today. I wish we were able to tell each other that our society, and its rulers, were becoming more alive to the threats to the countryside and to our scarce natural resources, above all in southern England. As it is, however, we face the familiar threats from pavement-oriented politicians, insensitive bureaucracies and richly-funded house builders, with whom CPRE has been locked in combat for the past 80 years. It is a formidable challenge. Yet the stakes have never seemed more worth the struggle. If we don’t do it, who else will ? If CPRE’s formidable team of experts, the splendid staff of national office and our director and chairman, do not maintain the campaign with the help of all of you out here in the countryside, CPRE’s officers and supporters, there is no one else to do it. You can pride yourselves that, if our organisation had not waged this battle for much of the past century, we should not today have so much left to defend. I am confident that, with your aid, CPRE can achieve as much in our next eighty years as we have in our last. Thank you all very much.