London’s desalination plant has cost more than half a billion pounds since 2010 and has run only five times, delivering 7.2bn litres of drinking water, roughly seven days of London’s typical daily demand. Now Thames Water is planning a new £500m project to tackle drought in the capital.
The Thames Gateway desalination plant at Beckton, built for £270m and now largely mothballed, has racked up an estimated £200m in debt interest, about £45m in idle upkeep and about £3m in operating costs, according to Thames Water figures. That puts the lifetime bill at about £518m, or about 7p for every litre the plant has ever produced, which is 28 times more than customers usually pay for their water.
