{"id":190214,"date":"2025-10-10T10:20:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T10:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/190214\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T10:20:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T10:20:08","slug":"drought-declared-in-sussex-due-to-declining-reservoir-levels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/190214\/","title":{"rendered":"Drought declared in Sussex due to declining reservoir levels"},"content":{"rendered":"

A drought has been declared in parts of East and West Sussex due to declining water levels at a reservoir.<\/p>\n

The Environment Agency (EA) has changed the status of the areas around Haywards Heath and Eastbourne to drought, with Ardingly Reservoir’s water level at 27.6% total capacity.<\/p>\n

The drought has been declared for the area supplied by South East Water (SEW) after hot and dry weather impacted availability of supplies, the EA said.<\/p>\n

Nick Price, SEW’S head of water resources, said the River Ouse catchment had only experienced two years with lower spring and summer rainfall in its 155-year recorded history.<\/p>\n

He added: “Consequently, the River Ouse, where we take water from in Sussex for supply and to refill our Ardingly Reservoir, is running low.”<\/p>\n

The reservoir supplies 228,000 homes with drinking water.<\/p>\n

People living in the drought zone have been urged to continue using a little water as possible.<\/p>\n

A hosepipe ban<\/a> will remain in place until water supply is secured, the EA said.<\/p>\n

Richard O’Callaghan, area environment manager at the EA, said: “Autumn and winter may feel like there is an excess of water at hand, but the climate is changing, and we must be sensible about water use all the time.<\/p>\n

“A few bursts of recent rainfall do not undo several dry months of cumulative impact.<\/p>\n

“It will take sustained rainfall to address prolonged dry weather and replenish reservoirs and rivers.”<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Surrey and the rest of East and West Sussex remain in prolonged dry weather status, the EA said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A drought has been declared in parts of East and West Sussex due to declining water levels at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-190214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}