{"id":654091,"date":"2026-06-23T14:04:26","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T14:04:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/654091\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T14:04:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T14:04:26","slug":"uk-heatwave-how-the-1976-drought-brought-standpipes-to-the-sw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/654091\/","title":{"rendered":"UK heatwave: How the 1976 drought brought standpipes to the SW"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">As the dry weather continued, pressure grew to keep both people and livestock supplied with water.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In the Channel Islands, farmers and hoteliers were told to cut their water use by a quarter or risk prosecution.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Jersey saw its longest absolute drought <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-europe-jersey-44870148\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">since records began in 1894<\/a>, with it lasting 39 days in 1976.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">With grasslands turning to dust, livestock had to be fed with winter stores of straw.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Across the region and islands, people were urged to use less water wherever possible.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Some households shared bath water, while others reused it in their gardens.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Speaking to the BBC at the time, one man joked: &#8220;You&#8217;ve got real fertiliser in there, haven&#8217;t you? It&#8217;s all the dirt coming off the bodies.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the dry weather continued, pressure grew to keep both people and livestock supplied with water. In the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-654091","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\/654091","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=654091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}