A Donald Trump-backing billionaire has been stopped from transporting water in tankers to fill a lake on his Wiltshire estate during a drought.
Southern Water has told tanker companies to cease delivering water to Stephen Schwarzman’s 2,500-acre estate after local residents filmed vehicles going day and night to its grounds.
Workers on the estate were using the water, entirely legally, to fill up a lake at Conholt Park. They were using water from standpipes in a part of Hampshire where a hosepipe ban is in place, and doing so was not in breach of any local water regulations. However, residents complained that he was doing so during such a ban, and the water company said it was “appalled” by this behaviour.
Schwarzman, the founder of the investment fund Blackstone, is one of the world’s richest men with an estimated net worth of over £30bn. He backed Trump in the 2024 election and has spoken in approval of the president’s controversial tariff policy.
The water company has recently applied for a drought order to ban businesses from filling lakes and swimming pools, and to ban the cleaning of business buildings and vehicles with a hosepipe. It has also applied to the government to be allowed to take water from a rare chalk stream, the River Test, even if that takes it past its ecologically safe flow rate.
While households have been banned from filling paddling pools with a hosepipe during the drought this summer, these tankers had been allowed to take the water from the standpipes because construction work is not, under the law, counted as “domestic use”. A spokesperson for Schwarzman said the water was being used to fill in a new lake as part of renovation of the grounds of his estate.
They added that the billionaire was committed to restoring the estate “with the highest regard to local laws and planning regulations”. They said: “For the majority of the construction period, until approximately the last three weeks, water purchased and transported to the site by tankers was used principally to support the building works and associated personnel” and that a “proportion of transported water has been used in connection with irrigation and the lake”.
The spokesperson concluded: “Following yesterday’s request from Southern Water that water is not directed to the lake, the estate has readjusted the supply of water accordingly.”
Tim Mcmahon, Southern Water’s managing director, said he was “appalled by this use of water” and said the tankers had been banned from taking water from the standpipes.
Mcmahon added: “While this disappointing occurrence is highly unusual and rare, I would like to reassure customers that I am leading a thorough review into how this happened, and how we can tighten up both our internal monitoring processes and any legal loopholes so that this cannot happen again.”
Southern Water told the BBC that it was first alerted by residents in Andover, who had spotted the tankers coming and going from the standpipes.
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Despite recent rainfall, England remains in a nationally significant water shortfall after a record dry spring and summer. Reservoirs are at their lowest level on record as of this week, and the Environment Agency expects drought conditions including hosepipe bans to continue throughout autumn.
Schwarzman bought the 17th-century shooting estate in 2022 for £82m and has since been renovating it, including planting trees and digging the lake.
A Blackstone spokesperson said: “The suggestion that the new owners of Conholt Park violated water regulations is false and misleading. They have taken extraordinary care to ensure the restoration of the property complies with all local laws and regulations. Most recently, as construction winds down (expected to be completed very soon), a proportion of transported water has been used in connection with irrigation and the lake.
“The water has been sourced through licensed providers responsible for the lawful and proper extraction and delivery. Water has been sourced from multiple locations, largely outside the region.”
