Rising groundwater levels in the United Kingdom.

Over recent years, rising water-table levels have been reported in a number of major cities throughout the world. In Britain, the most well-known examples are in London, Birmingham and Liverpool, but similar conditions have been experienced in some other cities and industrial areas. A common cause for these cases of rising water-tables is changing water demands by industry, which results in a reduced abstraction from private sources. There is some evidence that leakage from water mains and sewers is also significant in some areas. Changes in the pattern of direct groundwater abstraction by industry have been reviewed and compared with case histories revealed by a survey of the regional water authorities in England and Wales. Outline details of examples in Britain have been collated, together with a few case histories from other countries.

Reference
Brassington F.C. (1990) Rising groundwater levels in the United Kingdom. Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Part 1, Volume 88, Pages 1037-1057.