Southern Water confirms supply to more than 18,000 Waterside homes is back on as the outage is branded “unacceptable” by New Forest Green Party

MORE than 18,000 New Forest homes which had been without water since Thursday have all had their supply resumed, Southern Water has confirmed.

As reported in the A&T, residents in SO40 and SO45 postcodes – which includes Marchwood, Hythe, Didben Purlieu and Fawley – lost their supply as a result of Storm Ciarán’s “unprecedented impact”.

The company told the A&T the storm had impacted water quality and levels of the River Test close to its Testwood supply works, prompting supplies to be shut off.

On Saturday evening, around 5,300 properties had their supply reinstated, with the remaining 13,000 properties back in service by 1pm yesterday (Sunday).

A video explaining why the incident occurred was released by Southern Water.

A Southern Water spokesperson said: “Our Testwood site draws its water from the nearby chalk stream. Unfortunately, weeks of rain, including Storm Babet and Storm Ciarán, caused river levels to rise enormously, after floodwater ran into it from throughout the local area.

“This caused a build-up of mud, silt, and debris within the watercourse.

“Testwood is designed to clean and treat water with certain amounts of debris in, but not to the scale we experienced last week. We operate to the very highest legal and regulatory water quality standards, so our monitors did what they are supposed to do and triggered a shutdown of the site on Thursday 2nd November.

“Re-filling our water network has to be done slowly to prevent further issues like bursts, airlocks and excessive discoloured water from occurring.

“That’s why some customers were back in supply quicker than others. By Sunday 5th November, all customer taps were running once more in homes and businesses.”

Customers took to social media to vent their frustration at the outage, which saw traffic gridlocked as motorists sat in long queues to collect supplies from bottle stations and priority customers left without deliveries.

The outage also saw a number of schools forced to close, including Manor Church of England Infant School in Hardley, Marchwood infant and juniors, Waterside primary in Hythe, Hythe primary, Cadand primary, Waterside infant and juniors in Hythe, Greenwood School in Dibden Purlieu, Noadswood School in Dibden Purlieu and Oak Lodge in Hythe.

Cllr Adam Parker of the New Forest Green Party called the outage “unacceptable” and said the nationalisation of water companies was a necessary step towards ensuring the provision of clean and reliable water for all.

He added: "The temporary shutdown of the Testwood Water Supply Works and the subsequent disruption is unacceptable.

“Water is a critical public resource and its provision should not be at the mercy of private interests.

“Southern Water were fined a total of £90m in 2021 for dumping sewage into the Beaulieu River, amongst other sites, and now we have [had] tens of thousands of people, in my ward and across the wider district, without the most basic necessity of life."

Cllr Caroline Rackham, a Lib Dem member of NFDC, added: “I think residents have been shocked at how long this issue has taken to sort out.

“Schools and businesses have been closed, people have struggled to pick up water as its not been available 24-hours and it hasn’t been easily accessible for people who can’t drive either.

“I know this incident has been difficult for the water company to deal with and staff have been working hard on helping people.

“However, as with many of the issues faced by the water company, perhaps more needs to be done to solve the issue before it happens, rather than needing all this operation to deal with the impact of it all.”