Residents across West Devon have been assured their interrupted water supply should now have been reconnected.
About 10,000 householders, schools, businesses and many other customers have been without water in the Tavistock and Yelverton areas since Sunday evening.
The outage happened after a main burst at the Dousland water treatment site late on Easter Sunday.
Engineers have been working for the past two days to restore connection and today (Wednesday) many residents reported that water is back in the taps, but either at low pressure or very discoloured.
South West Water (SWW) said earlier this morning: “We plan to connect every customer and community to water within the next few hours as the network fully recharges so that customers have normal supply pressures. As water comes back into service, it is normal to expect discolouration, which should clear after running your cold kitchen tap. It is also common for air to become trapped in the supply, or within the internal plumbing.”
South West Water customers who live in Tavistock, Yelverton, Whitchurch, Horrabridge, Bere Alston, Woolwell and Roborough and surrounding areas have been affected.
The company apologised to customers again for the inconvenience and issued the following statement: “We are pleased to say that customers should now be back in supply. We want to apologise again for the inconvenience this has caused, but we would also like to thank all of our customers for their patience and kindness to our teams on the ground providing bottled water.”
Meanwhile, Whitchurch Primary School remained closed for the second day due to water supply issues. However, Horrabridge Primary School stayed open and is expecting a delivery of temporary loos.
The school said: “We will be open as normal today as we have been informed by SWW that we will receive a delivery of 12 Portaloos (with hand washing facilities) by the start of the school day.
“Please can all children still come in with a full bottle of water and a packed lunch if possible, we can cater to those without but it will only be a 'packed lunch' option.”
SWW advised people who still do not have any water to to make the following checks to check for airlocks:
- Turn the internal stop tap on and off three times to release any air whilst the cold kitchen tap is running.
- Check that your external stop tap is open, if it is safe to do so.
Bottled water is still being given out at the water stations including Morrisons in Tavistock and Knightstone Tearooms near Crapstone.
Local MPs Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) and Sir Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and Tavistock) were both in touch with South West Water managers urging a swift resolution.
Sir Geoffrey said this morning (Wednesday): “I am pressing for an early announcement on the compensation that SWW must make, by law, for the inconvenience to its customers and for a full and transparent explanation of why this problem occurred and how we can be reassured it will not happen again.”