• Question: How do you supplie 7,000,000 people with water?

    Asked by funkymonkey1 to Mark on 18 Jun 2014.
    • Photo: Mark Greaves

      Mark Greaves answered on 18 Jun 2014:

      Hello,

      Keeping all those people supplied with water is very hard!

      We take raw water from reservoirs, rivers and boreholes. This gets treated at one of our 97 water treatment works using a variety of processes including disaffection to make sure its safe to drink. Treated water is then put into supply. The supply network has around 42,000 km of pipework in the North West alone! The pipe would go around the world if was all joined together. Our supply network tries to make use of gravity as much as possible, pumping water requires a lot of electricity. Manchester gets its water from the lake district, it’s over 50 miles away but makes the journey by gravity alone!

      That’s a brief overview of water supply…of course we also take the water away when its been used too!

      Check out our website where there is a series of videos that show a bit more about it all.
      http://www.unitedutilities.com/all-about-water.aspx

      Mark

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