Leilah shares this latest news on behalf of Southern Water. Ed
We are launching a major initiative to tackle leaks from our network in south Hampshire, the Isle of Wight and Southampton, with big investments in new teams and new technology.
The investment will cover the recruitment of 30 new ‘find and fix’ teams, bringing the total number of units covering the whole Southern Water region to 190 from just 100 two years ago.
Using digital technology
New technology is also a major part of the plan with £250,000 being spent in the area. That money will be spent on installing an extra 1,600 acoustic loggers to add to the 3,760 already attached to our water pipes.
The loggers use digital technology to monitor the noise water is making. Another 15 units will be available for rapid deployment in hotspot areas identified by network monitoring.
More computer technology in our network control centre will be used by freshly-trained technicians to feed better data from an entirely new leakage reporting system to the find and fix teams.
Tapping: Region facing the ‘jaws of death’
Phil Tapping, water demand manager, says that working smarter will also help reducing wastage and help us reach a target of cutting leaks by 15 per cent by 2025.
“We’ve had a good record historically on leakage and are near the top of the league table in England but we have to do more.
“Southern England truly faces the ‘jaws of death’ in Environment Agency chief executive Sir James Bevan’s memorable words. We’ll be asking our customers to try to reduce their use but must prove we are doing our part.”
The extra funding in Hampshire is part of an overall additional £4 million investment in acoustic logging by September and a £2.4 million extra investment in leak fixing in the coming year.
Image: Alan Stanton under CC BY 2.0
