Residents wait weeks for water leaks to be fixed while told to ‘save water’

Frustrated locals have been waiting for more than a month for water chiefs to stop the flow of a drain running down their street. Residents said the site was blocked with a traffic light system for traffic management.

At a time when South West Water (SWW) has an ongoing campaign urging people to save water, a resident who has to drive down Old Roselyon Road in Par, near St Austell, to go to work every morning, said: “It’s been over a month. It was now supposed to be finished by July 9, then they pushed back another two weeks, according to an email sent by South West Water.” She added: “The funny thing is they worked on it and just left it.”

According to a live incident map on the utility’s website, nothing is happening in Old Roselyon Road, even though pictures sent to us by locals prove otherwise. However, the roadworks appear on a Cornwall Council live map of ongoing roadworks. If you click on it, it says that work started on June 26th and is due to be completed by midnight on Monday, July 23rd.

Read more: Fury as South West Water ignores leak so big it could ‘fill a pool’

Read next: Pressure on new Labor government to reverse ‘insulting’ huge water bill hike

The SWW map shows 261 incidents, planned or otherwise dealt with by the company – of which 49 are ongoing spills. For example, there are around 30 in West Cornwall, 117 in Mid Cornwall, 47 in the greater St Austell area and 12 in the Bude area. Clicking on each individual incident tells you what the work is about.

Cornwall councilor Pauline Giles said residents had spoken to her about the leak in Old Roselyon Road. In a Facebook post, she said she reached out to the utility company about it and got some answers about the delay.

Get the best stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox every day. Choose what you want Here.

Pauline said: “You refer to the water leak at Old Roselyon, I have spoken to SWW and this is their response, there is often a reason why work cannot be undertaken as quickly as they would like, this that’s the case here. Public safety is paramount. .”

SWW said the issue involved contractors. They replied: “We are aware of this. Unfortunately, in order for our Kier contractors to carry out the work safely, we have to wait for another of our contractors, Enerveo, to remove the lamp post as the drain is too close to it.

“We are working as quickly as possible to resolve this as they know it is attracting quite a bit of attention. Until Enerveo removes it, we won’t be able to make any progress.”

⚠️ Want the latest breaking news and top articles about Cornwall first? Click here to join CornwallLive on WhatsApp and we’ll send you breaking news and top stories straight to your phone. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions and ads from us and our partners. If you don’t like our community, you can check out anytime you want. If you are curious, you can read our Privacy Notice ⚠️

Among other local incidents, one yesterday (Wednesday July 17) in St Georges Hill, Perranporth, says: “Due to a burst in our mains, some customers in the St Georges Hill area of ​​Perranporth may experience lower water pressure than usually. or a loss of supply while we carry out emergency repairs in the area. Supply should be restored in the next three to four hours.”

In the St Blazey area, a leak from Carne Cross is listed as repaired. Another is about an “unplanned interruption”.

SWW said: “We would like to thank our customers for their patience while we completed urgent repair work in the Par & St Austell area, PL24 and PL26. Our team have been working hard overnight and we are pleased to confirm that supplies in the area were restored at 11.10pm last night.

“If you notice discoloration, simply run the kitchen faucet for up to an hour to help clear it. The brown or yellow appearance is caused by the disturbance of the natural sediment within the main, and although it is not harmful, due to its appearance we do not. I recommend drinking it.”