“There are a lot of angry people on the Isle of Wight,” a Southern Water boss was told amid a grilling of the corporation from all corners of the council last week.
Councillor Jock Rafferty was just one of the councillors who dialled up the pressure on chief operations officer Tim McMahon on Thursday (November 5), telling the executive that Islanders are paying lots of money to his company and are getting sick swimming in the sea.
Southern Water boss recognises Islanders’ anger
Mr McMahon told the environment and community protection committee he recognised customers aren’t happy with Southern Water. Councillor Rafferty said,
“Listening to you I think everything’s under control.
“You’ve got a plan in place. Why do you think there’s so many angry people on the Isle of Wight with Southern Water?”
Mr McMahon said he recognised the outrage on the Island and added that he spoke to a lot of customers at a Your Waters Matters event. He continued,
“I take that really seriously and I’ve seen customers today, so I do know that.
“No one wants any pollution going into the sea and, secondly, it’s about spills going out of outfalls and overflows – customers don’t want that to happen, they don’t want any to happen and I don’t want any to happen.
“The issue I’ve got is going to take a long time to fix and when you’ve got overflows that have less than ten a year which the majority of the Island does, I’m not funded for that.
“And that’s what I’m working very hard to try and expedite my catchment studies to try and then go to the regulators to secure that investment because I need the investment to fix it.
“I just need to make sure we’ve got a plan and we deliver on the plan that we commit to customers.”
Cowes pumping station spills
Earlier in the meeting, Councillor Rafferty, the Cowes North Labour councillor, probed the utility firm over “119 hours” of sewage spills in this year alone.
He said,
“Springhill pumping station…Southern Water described this as the highest risk and where the most failings occur. You’re not proposing to start any work until the earliest September 2027.
“That means a whole summer season and Cowes Week, a whole year where nothing really is going to happen. This year…there were 119 hours of sewage spills and 81 events.
“What is Southern Water going to do to prevent another 119 hours…and 81 events before the earliest you propose to do any work?”
Work not expected to start until September 2027
Mr McMahon said September is the worst-case date and added that Southern Water needs to work with the council to expedite this. He said,
“The key will be getting traffic management planning and getting into the roads to do those excavations.
“Our rising mains are very old…probably about half need replacing which is going to take a huge amount of time to do and probably is cost prohibitive to customers.
“The plan is by the next bathing water season all those rising mains will be checked to make sure they are of a better standard in terms of the pumps and the way they work to prevent or reduce the risk of them bursting as frequently.
“We’ve got playbooks in place now on our core rising mains so if one does burst we know where to put tankers much more effectively than we have done in the past.”
Rising mains are pressurised pipes that carry water uphill.
Further stories from the Southern Water meeting will be published over the coming days.
This article is from the BBC’s LDRS (Local Democracy Reporter Service) scheme, which News OnTheWight is taking part in. Some alterations and additions may have been made by OnTheWight. Ed
