Up to 30,000 homes and businesses on the Isle of Wight look set to have their water supply completely cut off, or will experience low pressure, due to the after effects of today’s flash flooding, Southern Water has announced.
From tomorrow morning (Thursday), it is expected that 11,000 properties on the South side of the Isle of Wight will experience no water, or at best low pressure.
However, later in the day this could extend to a further 20,000 properties – meaning around 31,000 homes and businesses could find themselves without water – that’s around half the Island.
It’s unknown how long the water could be off for.
The situation has come about due to significant pressure on the Island’s water and wastewater networks, which is making operations at wastewater pumping stations and water supply works much more difficult than normal.
Southern Water teams and partners continue to work hard to try to minimise water supply issues to customers’ homes and businesses, and wastewater flooding impacts, in a safe and controlled manner.
To manage the supply risk, Southern Water is proactively doing the following:
- Stood up an incident to manage and coordinate the situation, to try to reduce impacts to customers
- Coordinating the delivery of bottled water to the most vulnerable customers on the Priority Services Register
- Working with partners to coordinate suitable sites for bottled water stations
- Tankers are on the island to support the recovery of the network
The utility company says it has received several reports of internal property flooding, caused by hydraulic overload of the sewer network. Those that have been confirmed as flooding from the sewer network are being attended by specialist clean up teams.
Water collection points are being set up but the locations have not yet been confirmed. Affected residents will be able to collect bottled water but it is unknown at the time if there will be a limit.
Those who are on the Priority Services Register will have bottled water delivered directly to their door.
Bob Seely, Member of Parliament for the Isle of Wight, has this afternoon said:
“I have made requests to Southern Water for bottled water stations in Brighstone, Niton and Wroxall. They are looking at options and will update on water locations in the coming hours on their website and social media.
The Environment Agency say that they are expecting up to 40mm of rain tomorrow morning, so there is more rain and possibly some more flooding to come. It’s less water than today, but it’s additional to today.
“We also have the fourth highest tides of the year this weekend, so there is risk of some coastal flooding over Saturday and Sunday”.
The Isle of Wight has experienced exceptional rainfall over the past 24 hours with more than 80mm recorded at Ryde. This led to flash flooding overnight and throughout the day with homes flooded and vehicles stranded.
What does this mean? – Stood up an incident to manage and coordinate the situation, to try to reduce impacts to customers
I think it means someone looked out of a window and thought they could make a profit by charging us for a service we cannot access under the guise of it being ‘an act of god’.
Oh you can when you only take any notice of shareholders profits and not customers needs,you watch hosepipe ban next Summer it’s disgraceful and time somebody in government”fat chance”stood up to Southern Water,although thinking on it they are probably all silent investors as well!
Management speak.Mesningless.
You couldn’t make it up,
No water because it rained to much.
No water because selfish people are having two showers a day and using dish washer, flushing toilet after every wee etc, multiply that by thousands and obvious drains cannot on top of rain water cope. We also want clean water out of tap but as water purification become overwhelmed with contamination takes longer to supply. The amount of rain was reason. Same as when you’re house roof blows off in 150 wind you can’t blame the roof fitter.
Going without water for few days with all rain water we can use to flush, or boil to wash won’t harm us . Not like we in desert and heat wave!.
With what Southern Water charge us and the profits they make there should have been sufficient funds in there bank accounts to give us a system capable of coping with any possible scenario because let’s face it we should be expecting heavy rain we get it every year.
So it’s clear Southern Water are more concerned about profits than they are ‘Jo public’ who pay exorbitant fees for a sub standard service @
and your rant is about what? you carry on
don,t forget the comeing hosepipe bans…
Would be useful to know how long the water is likely to be off for?
Forever and ever
There is a single sentence in the middle of this report that says they don’t know. The issues will obviously need to be investigated before they can work out a solution. I will also be affected by this but as it is out of my control like everyone else, we can only wait and see, however annoying and frustrating that is….and yes like everyone else I am also fed up with the money that SW waste!
So the slow release water butts aren’t working? I am so surprised NOT.
Like most of this green save the planet tripe, nature is far more powerful than all our efforts , so don’t worry about what you can do nothing about.
Like the ‘brace brace ‘ instructions on a plane, pointless but gives the gullible hope by doing‘something’ despite being pointless.
Brace brace is so your head stays attached so you can be identified by dental records. Not that anyone has a dentist these days.
Only brightside, Wroxall and Niton. Does that meen it is only going to affect homes over that way? Not that I want it to affect anyone but both my daughter and myself are on priority service but not heard anything. We are in Newport.
maybe some idea of postcodes so business can plan
Don’t worry! Don’t panic! Bob has asked for bottled water! Then he will ensure that Southern Water will continue to withdraw large profits while giving us consumers sewage in our seas. Yet again.
The UK has awful old sewers and things precisely because our water was private until WW2. It should never have been reprivatised to fix issues that largely existed precisely because of the private sector in the first place.
Been an absolute failure, hasn’t it? Now collapsing into a shambles because they took 65 billion in profits and (gasp!) didn’t fix the issues.
Are southern water taking the mick, you wait till summer hose pipe ban,store the water not dump it absolutely disgusting service owned by clowns
Owned by shareholders. That’s the problem.
Time for them to spend a bit more of our water bill on sorting it out instead of giving it to the fat cats at the top perhaps?
No information at all about this on Southern Water’s Website nor any tweets on X so all in all their ability to dissemination information to its victims is on a par with what goes into, and too often comes out of, their sewage treatment facilities.
Its not that hard to find the information – limited though it is and only if you have access to the web….Search Southern Water, then select ‘work or issues in my area’. This brings up a map and it shows were current works are being undertaken – click on either the red warning triangle (more serious works) with the exclamation mark or the green spanner. Alternatively look on the left of your screen and you should see updates by postcode with a link to ‘view incident’
I go away and one day later…
Going to cost Southern Water a fortune in compensation. They have to pay £20 for the first day without water and £10 for each day after that. Could cost them millions if they don’t fix this fast.
Them? Us you mean…..
Of course, water companies have a legal obligation to supply water, so there has to be bottled water for everyone who is affected. They cannot limit amounts of bottled water.
How about postcodes affected or areas not just a bunch of numbers.
Classic case of infrastructure failure because of overdevelopment of new houses.
So they dump sewage in the sea and expect us to pay waste water charges, now it looks like they are not going to be able to supply our clean water. What are we exactly paying our water bills for??
Stop moaning, just buy bottled water to drink, we all don’t need to shower/ washing machine/ dishwasher/ it’s only temporary??
Buy bottled water in addition to paying a monthly bill for water to come out of our taps? Do you work for Southern Water by any chance? Or are you a relative of Marie Antoinette? Some of us can’t afford to simply ‘buy bottled water’, and with the roads flooded, some of us also cannot physically get to the shops or collection points! Just because you might be able to, doesn’t mean everyone else can. Maybe use your brain before you open your mouth next time.
No mouth was opened. Surprisingly, writing is not talking. Life lesson.
Likely that the water treatment works aren’t built to cope with the amount of water flowing at the moment and the fact that it is probably full of sewage and animal waste. Treatment works can only process mucky water very slowly or there is a risk of infecting us all with microbes such as Giardia and Cryptosporidium. Not what you want.
IE please can you post a link here for the bottled water distribution, times and where they will be available from.
These are another lot screwing us. Charging a fortune to ”return water to the sewer”. More or less double the cost of the fresh water we use. They are NOT treating the water returned to the sewer like they are charging us for. They are dumping it in our seas and rivers. The money we are being charged for treatment is being given to greedy bosses and share holders. We should all start refusing to pay for what we are not getting. We are being taken for mugs by corrupt companies and it’s managements
a lot of people are google boycott water bills .com
are we all going to get a rebate then?…oh i thought as much..
if you are without water after 12 hours you can claim check out Guaranteed standards of service “If we fail to restore the supply within 12 hours , we’ll automatically credit your water services account with £30. A further automatic payment of £30 will be made for each additional period of 12 hours during which the interruption continues.”
Southern Water. Don’t you dare cut off our water supply. You sould have systems in place to cope with unprecedented flooding such as this. You are a disgrace.
Environment Agency, what is the point of a multi million pound system if you can’t be bothered to get out if bed and turn it on ??!! You too are a disgrace.
What are we paying our Council Tax for ?
I despair of these idiots.
It’s a shame these clowns don’t move as fast to fix the problem as they did to raise the water bills by 50%.
And they want to build more properties in Ryde
Lol!!