Amid continuous water supply issues across Sussex, a ban on using hosepipes and sprinklers has been introduced.
The announcement comes as 2,500 residents across Crowborough, Rotherfield, Wadhurst and Mayfield are now into their sixth day of demand issues which has caused the closure of schools and worries that residents in local care homes will suffer.
Wealden MP Nusrat Ghani called for a hose pipe ban to be introduced earlier in the week to help save crucial water supplies – but that call has fell on deaf ears until today. Ms Ghani commented: “We’re in a cycle of outages and compensation. We had this disastrous Christmas and now we’ve got issues across my constituency all because it’s hot. There’s no resilience in the water supply system. It’s a nightmare. My message is please get your act together, enough is enough.”
Hot weather conditions has meant the demand of tap water has increased and following a number of mains burst and power outages, the water authority is struggling to top up reserves.
A spokesperson from South-East Water said: “We have asked our customers to only use water for essential purposes, and we would like to thank all who have taken steps to try to reduce overall water use, unfortunately, it has not been enough to reduce demand to a typical level. Therefore, we have been left with no choice but to restrict the use of hosepipes and sprinklers in Kent and Sussex until further notice – this is also referred to as a Temporary Usage Ban or TUBs.”
South-East Water typically supplies 540 million litres of water a day during summertime, which is already increased from the usual demand across the rest of the year. Last weekend, demand peaked at 678 million litres of water, 138 million litres of extra water to supply, and has remained above 631 million litres a day, ever since.
The original article is available here.
