Stroud Water Commons
Who we are and how to contact us
Stroud Water Commons is a group of local people who want to bring water and sewage infrastructure in Stroud into community ownership in perpetuity, to make locally-owned, sustainable water and sewerage services available and affordable for everyone.
If you’d like to get involved, either as a prospective customer, investor, steward or volunteer, please read the information on this page, and get in touch.
Why water commons?
The catastrophic problems of privatised English water companies are well known. Sewerage function and drinking water supply are now more deficient than even before privatisation. Terminal failure was in-built from the start, within the cultural, operational, & regulatory processes applied. Correcting these foundational criteria can help inform the quickest resolution.
There’s a conflict of interest between the pursuit of profit and the public interest in the business of water and sewerage
Public health standards have not been applied to our rivers or seas.
There’s plenty of scope for small-scale, natural commons and/or community-owned water supply and wastewater treatment, providing useful compost, and around 90% cheaper than the hard, civil engineered corporate methods.
The basic concept
A water commons is an association of 4 member groups: customers, investors, stewards, and a ‘custodian’ group (like trusted ‘village elders’) with a veto vote to ensure that commons principles are adhered to, and that water and sewage infrastructure is never sold out of the commons. The commons group issues vouchers that can be redeemed for water supply and sewage treatment. Vouchers are purchased by investors and/or customers, and the cash raised is used to build, install and maintain water and sewerage infrastructure. This avoids debt to the banking system.
More details
We’re working with Water21 and Mutual Credit Services to design commons models and water engineering solutions for a water commons for Stroud. We’ll post more information here when we have it.
Roadmap and news
It’s very early days, but after an initial meeting of some concerned local people, a basic roadmap has been written up to build a Stroud Water Commons, working in partnership with Stroud Land Commons and/or local landowners to obtain land initially for natural sewage infrastructure owned by the community. This will be based on reed beds, for which we have local expertise via Water21.
We’ll be looking at piloting local models. The roadmap involves firstly generating questionnaires for local businesses, individuals and community organisations to help us drill down into their needs as regards water provision and sewage management, after which we’ll be negotiating with OFWAT, water companies, the local authority, EA, then building commons tools for community investment and ownership, followed by scoping of sites, consultations, design and implementation of natural systems.
We want to empower individuals and communities to manage their own sewage safely, whilst reducing bills and pollution. We’ll do this with ongoing communication with local people, water companies and local authorities, and we’ll be developing a range of educational materials to inform the public and interested bodies.
Other sources of information
- Lowimpact.org: introductory information on sustainable sewage treatment.
- Water21: our partners for installing water and sewerage infrastructure in Stroud.
- Lowimpact.org: information on reed beds
- Lowimpact.org: introductory information on sustainable water supply