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muriel_volestrangler

(106,600 posts)
Fri Sep 12, 2025, 05:22 AM Sep 2025

UK water firm bans tankers from transporting water from drought zone for Trump backer's lake

Southern Water has warned tanker companies to stop delivering its water to the Wiltshire estate of an American billionaire.

Some of it was recently used, entirely legally, to help fill a lake, despite a hosepipe ban being in place locally for domestic users.

Multiple water tankers have been filmed both day and night by local residents filling up from standpipes in part of neighbouring Hampshire where a drought order is in place.

The BBC has been told that those tankers went to Conholt Park, a 2,500 acre estate owned by Stephen Schwarzman – who is one of the world's richest men and a financial backer of US President Donald Trump.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq5jg9vy1n0o

There is currently a "hosepipe ban" in Hampshire - you can't use outdoor taps to water your garden, or top up existing pools or ponds, since:

Central, eastern and southern parts of England have been exceptionally dry while northern and western areas of the UK - especially Scotland - have been much wetter.

Hosepipe bans are in force across large parts of England - partly because the dry hot summer has followed the UK's driest spring in more than 50 years.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/articles/c1kz18d3wjro

But it was apparently legal to truck maybe a million litres of water a day to the neighbouring county to fill a new lake because it counts as "construction". Schwarzman is obscenely rich - the founder of private equity firm Blackstone, with perhaps £30bn.
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