THERE’S no getting away from the fact that we waste enormous amounts of water.

Just as we are rapidly using up the planet’s stocks of fossil fuel, which are non-renewable in any time span that’s relevant to the human race, we literally pour down the drains every day millions of gallons of the stuff from which life itself sprang.

Thousands of extravagant car washes, water features which don’t recycle and leaving taps running unnecessarily are just a few of the ways in which ordinary folk contribute to over-use.

It’s a blind spot too because lots of us go to great lengths to ‘be seen to be green’ in many areas of everyday life but never think to conserve water.

But having said all that it’s beyond my understanding why we find ourselves apparently less than a fortnight from a hosepipe ban in what is surely by any medium to long term measure the wettest part of England.

Only a few months ago we were emerging from the longest and coldest winter in living memory during which records amounts of that white stuff called snow fell and stayed on the ground for weeks and weeks.

Now United Utilities tells us here in East Lancashire that rainfall between January and May has been so low that a drought plan is being implemented because reservoirs are only 60 per cent full instead of at least 80 per cent.

In places like Australia and Asia where some places have no rain for years at a time, grass has long since died and the earth is nothing but dust it’s easy to understand why water companies have real problems providing adequate supplies.

But here where householders pay a monopoly business significant amounts of money month after month it’s difficult to see why six months after the terrible floods up the road in Cumbria we in Lancashire are being told there isn’t enough water to go round without a form of rationing.

Instead of focusing on large profits, getting involved in electricity and gas as well as opening up operations all over the world it would be nice if United Utilities could find a way of storing enough of the water we undoubtedly do get from the skies to keep us going throughout the year.

And until then how nice it would be if all water users were treated equally.

By that I mean that keen gardeners who are forced to watch the veg and fruits of their labours wither and die during a hosepipe ban shouldn’t also have to listen to the ‘swish, swish’ of sprinklers still operating to keep the greens green on nearby golf courses!