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“Spitting, fuming, angry and powerless” is how Pat Prestage describes her emotions after a water outage that has affected thousands of homes in Kent during the heatwave.
On Wednesday, 8,000 South East Water customers in Whitstable lost water, with 14,000 more in Tankerton, Ashford, and its surrounding areas facing an intermittent supply or low pressure. South East Water’s incident manager, Matthew Dean, said on Thursday that 22,000 people had had water supply problems.
The company blamed increased demand in the hot weather and asked people to use water only for essential purposes.
Prestage, 67, lives with a disability that makes her more vulnerable to events like this. At 6.30pm on Wednesday, Prestage’s water supply in Whitstable went off. Her husband, Martin, tried to ring for an emergency delivery but could not get through to South East Water’s emergency line. On Thursday morning, he spent more than an hour queueing for water at a bottle station.
The Prestages are angry at the company’s response, particularly its co-option of what the couple describe as the “blitz spirit” in asking customers with water to ease up on their usage to help those without.
“They talk to the public as if they’re a public service. They’re a private company, run for profit!” says Pat. “Some of the money we’re paying, they’re pocketing, and it’s not going into the reservoir we’ve needed for 40 years.”
Martin says “the inference is almost that it’s our fault”.
“They say the extreme hot weather means the system can’t cope, but what sort of system is it that goes offline like it has for us for 20 hours?” says Martin. “Surely you build things into the system so you don’t get that happening.”
MPs accused South East Water’s senior executives of incompetence earlier this month over repeated water outages for tens of thousands of customers, leading to the resignation of the water company’s chair and chief executive.
At a water collection point between Whitstable and Herne Bay, hundreds of cars lined up in 27C heat.
In one parking spot, 90-year-old Kayce Snellgrove sat in the front seat while her daughter, Debbie Finch, loaded bottles into the back. Despite being on a priority list, Snellgrove said she had not received any water delivery as she had during last year’s outage, and had not had access to water since Wednesday evening.
“Absolutely disgusting, it is,” says Snellgrove. “I live alone, I’m 90 years old, and I’m cut off again. It is absolutely ridiculous.”
Caroline Wade, a single parent in Whitstable who runs a PR business, did not have time to queue for water. On Thursday morning she sent her daughter on a play date to a house where there was water and went to work.
“Is this the new standard of living in modern day Britain?” asks Wade. “Myself and my daughter have no water for bathing, washing utensils, for drinking or flushing the toilet during one of the hottest Mays on record.”
Water outages are becoming a part of life in Kent.
Ayhan Betez, a 56-year-old semi-retired police officer, said water loss was “going to be part of daily living. People have to start getting bottles of water in, thinking of plans, getting portable showers, buckets, and accept this will happen every year”.
The government aims to cut water use in England by 20% per person per day by 2038, and to reduce average consumption to 110 litres per person per day by 2050. The current average water use in Britain per person per day is 142-150 litres, one of the highest per-capita daily water usage rates in Europe.
A recent report said that, alongside other measures, an urgent campaign aimed at reducing water use was needed to avoid shortages of 5bn litres a day by 2055 in England.
In a statement, South East Water said it was doing everything it could to get treated water into its storage reservoirs, but “some customers will continue to have intermittent water supply until these levels have been restored”. It apologised to customers, especially in the light of the hot weather, and saidit would continue to do all it could to prevent and resolve the issues.
Additional reporting by Sandra Laville
