David Harris, Incident Director at South West Water, said: “Our teams on the ground continue to work as quickly as we can to resolve the situation in the Hillhead supply area, where we are still advising around 2,500 properties to boil their drinking water before consuming.
“We are urgently investigating the damaged air valve on private land which we believe to be the probable cause, and following the draining and cleaning of Hillhead reservoir we have now refilled the largest of the two tanks within the reservoir and we have isolated the second tank.
“We are working 24 hours a day, and early this morning we commenced flushing of the wider Hillhead network as we work to eliminate any traces of cryptosporidium. We will not lift the boil water notice in Hillhead until we and our public health partners are completely satisfied it is safe to do so.
“Our bottled water stations in Broadsands, Freshwater Quarry and Churston remain open to customers across the Brixham area between 7am and 9pm daily.
Background
- On Saturday (18 May) we advised around 14,500 properties in the Alston supply area they no longer need to boil their drinking water. This followed several water quality monitoring results last week confirming no cryptosporidium. Daily water quality monitoring will continue across Hillhead and Alston supply areas.
- We continue to urge customers who are unsure whether they are still affected by a boil water notice to check South West Water’s website, or to call the dedicated customer contact team.
- Compensation has been increased to £215 – almost half the amount of an annual average bill – for those customers still subject to boil water advice in the Hillhead, upper Brixham and Kingswear areas. This payment will be made automatically where we have direct debit details or applied as a credit to their next water bill where we do not.
- We have handed out and delivered over half a million bottles of water since the start of the incident, including direct deliveries to vulnerable customers and schools, hospitals and care homes.
- Affected businesses should contact SWW’s customer service team on 03332 343 293 to fast track any compensation claims.
