500m Thames Water desalination plant has provided just seven days' water over 15 years

"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."

"A senior water industry figure was blunt: Father Thames is going to get hit because you're taking clean water out and you're putting dirtier water back in. They can't argue that. If that was not the case, why wouldn't they just take water from wastewater treatment works, put it through treatment, and use that for drinking water? The Beckton desalination plant is not a clean fix. It is energy intensive, produces brine and discharges effluent containing chlorine, chloroform and bromoform disinfectant byproducts into the Thames."

"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. Thames Water now plans to build a new drought-resilience scheme on the Thames for an estimated cost of between 359-535m which will be paid for by customers. The Teddington Direct River Abstraction (TDRA) scheme would remove water from the river at Teddington, pump it to the Lee Valley reservoirs in north London, and replace it with treated effluent from Mogden sewage works in west London."

London's Beckton desalination plant has cost roughly £518m since 2010 yet has operated only five times, producing 7.2bn litres of drinking water, about seven days of the city's typical demand. The plant's lifetime bill includes an estimated £200m in debt interest, about £45m in idle upkeep and about £3m in operating costs. The per-litre cost of water produced is about 7p, 28 times the usual customer price. Thames Water plans a new drought-resilience scheme, the Teddington Direct River Abstraction (TDRA), costing £359–535m to be funded by customers and involving river abstraction and effluent substitution. Environmental concerns include high energy use, brine and disinfectant byproduct discharges.

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