HAMPSHIRE is facing a summer of drought after one of the driest winters on record.

The lack of rain has stopped the usual replenishment of the underground chalk aquifers that lie beneath much of the county.

But Southern Water this week said it did not foresee hosepipe bans across most of Hampshire, even though nationally last year was the driest in England for 90 years.

The company called on customers to conserve water.

Around 70 per cent of Hampshire’s water comes from the aquifers which feed springs. About 23 per cent comes from rivers and only seven per cent from reservoirs which in other parts of the south-east are very low.

Rod Murchie, Environment Agency water resources manager, said: “We are always more resilient because of our vast chalk aquifer. But it is a certainly going to be an environmental drought. At the moment things aren’t as bad as they were in 1976. This winter is not as dry.

“The groundwater and river levels are getting close to the long-term minimum.

“Recharging through winter rain is finished so things aren’t going to get better and we are entering a second year of record low water levels. The Candover stream is very dry. North Pond at Bishop’s Waltham is dry and probably will not fill at all this year.”

Mr Murchie added: “The head waters of the Test and Itchen will also probably be dry but wildlife has strategies to adapt to that. But there will be algal blooms and distressed fish dying. People with private wells and boreholes will also have problems.”

He said farmers would have to consider building bigger reservoirs to tide them over for two dry years instead of one, as has already been happening in East Anglia.

Mr Murchie did not predict water supply problems and said any hosepipe bans would first hit the north of Hampshire before the central and southern areas.

Last September the Environment Agency started pumping water at Candover Stream, north of Alresford, into the Itchen in an experiment to see if it would help protect against droughts.