The Witney area has been enduring a range of issues related to the UK’s largest water company in recent weeks, impacting 1,000s of residents.
Last week a critical mains water pipe suffered a catastrophic burst which created serious water supply issues from the afternoon of Wednesday, March 4.
Thousands of homes were without water as Thames Water attempted to isolate the broken pipe in Eynsham, off Oxford Road by the Swinford Toll Bridge.
READ MORE: Thames Water update after major Oxfordshire water outage
A complicated repair followed, with a new piece of pipe having to be manufactured and installed.
Three bottled water stations were opened – two in Carterton, and one in Witney – and homes, businesses, schools and doctors surgeries were left without no or low tap water for what turned out to be days.
A new piece of pipe was manufactured and installed (Image: Mark Wood)
In addition, the water station in Carterton ran out of bottles by 6.30pm on Thursday, when it was supposed to be open until 9pm.
A total of 15 schools closed on Friday, while farmers were left with no water for their livestock and businesses like Abbott Laboratories had to close during the outage.
On Monday, March 9, a spokesperson for Thames Water apologised again and said all customers’ water supply had been restored.
Thames Water has apologised to customers for the disruption (Image: Andrew Matthews/PA Wire)
The company said: “This was an extremely complex repair due to the size of the pipe, its location within a field and due to excess water.
“Our teams worked around the clock to restore water supply as quickly as possible, while also providing bottled water at distribution stations and delivering it to customers who are on our Priority Services Register and places such as care homes and non-households.”
Charlie Maynard, MP for Witney, at the Carterton bottled water station (Image: Charlie Maynard MP)
Charlie Maynard, MP for Witney, said: “It didn’t go perfectly and this whole episode has been massively disruptive for everybody – from schools and parents, to farmers and GPs – but given that that’s the reality of it, it’s been dealt with well.”
This comes as a renewed focus is put on Thames Water dumping sewage into waterways, by the critically acclaimed drama Dirty Business.
Ash Smith and Peter Hammond of WASP by the Windrush river, reflecting on Channel 4 drama Dirty Business (Image: Ed Nix)
The Channel 4 series shows the investigations of Windrush Against Sewage Pollution (WASP) campaigners Ash Smith and Peter Hammond, whose suspicions are first aroused when they notice fish dying in the river.
Despite their investigation first beginning a decade ago, over the last three months, according to sewagemap, the Witney Sewage Treatment Plant has pumped sewage into its local river for a combined 524 hours, Burford for 450 hours and Bourton-On-The-Water for 1428 hours.
READ MORE: Hugh Grant praise for Cotswolds based Channel 4 sewage show
“Taking action to improve the health of our rivers,” said a spokesperson for Thames Water, “is a key focus for us and?that is why,?over the next five years, we are delivering the most significant upgrade to the wastewater network?in 150 years including in West Oxfordshire”.
Crisis talks are still ongoing at the company, which serves 16 million people, despite it reporting a profit of over £400 million for the six months to September last year.
It reportedly has net debt of over £15 billion and last year was handed a record-breaking fine of over £120 million by Ofwat for breaches of rules relating to wastewater operations.
Some, including WASP campaigners, have called for it to be put into public ownership.
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