Three Green Party councillors at Kent County Council have issued “Councillor Call for Action” (CCfAs) to KCC’s Scrutiny committee over the water crisis facing the county.
The trio are calling for KCC to declare a Kent Water Supply Emergency; asking that the authority invites South East Water and Southern Water to the 10th June Flood and Water Management committee; requesting KCC’s Scrutiny committee investigates whether Kent’s water supply is fit for purpose and asking KCC to create a plan to rectify the situation if water supply in Kent is not fit for purpose.
A Councillor Call For Action is a rarely-used mechanism that empowers local councillors to refer to persistent problems in their divisions to a Scrutiny committee for resolution.
This follows recent water supply shortages in Ashford, Sevenoaks, Tankerton, Radfall, Maidstone, Charing, Herne Bay and Whitstable and low pressure issues in Thanet.
In Whitstable residents were told by South East Water at 1:31pm today that “you will lose supply later today”, after supply in Tankerton cut out last night (26/05).
In Thanet, Southern Water has delivered water bottles to Priority Service residents and 20 water tankers are pumping water directly into the network.
Bottled water stations were opened and priority deliveries made on the isle over the Bank Holiday weekend as a precaution after operational issues at Selling and Eastling water supply works.
Southern Water warned that reservoir levels were lower than usual and “at risk of disruption.”
The bottled water stations at Manston airport and Tesco Manston were closed yesterday (May 26). However, an update this evening (May 27) says: “We are currently experiencing very high demand for water across Thanet and the Isle of Sheppey. All customers are in supply as normal and our teams are working around the clock to keep water flowing.”
The company has asked people to use water wisely.
The move comes after debate on Kent’s water problems at a council meeting last week did not go ahead and was ins6tead by the KCC chairman deferred to the next meeting.
The call for action also follows significant and ongoing water outages across Kent this week.
The UK Government’s website shows when new reservoirs in Kent will be built but the largest of these isn’t expected to be online until 2039.
Cllr Rob Yates, representing Cliftonville division in Thanet, said: “We are not even in summer and we have 20 water tankers pumping water into our system. What are we going to do in mid-summer?
“Kent County Council leadership are too busy focusing on things that don’t matter. This is a real emergency and we need to find a solution.”
Cllr Stuart Heaver, representing a division in Whitstable, said: “It is unbelievable that once again my residents are without water. This madness just gets worse and KCC have their head firmly buried in the arid sand. We need to find out if our water supply is fit for purpose and resolve this.”
Cllr Stuart Jeffery, representing a division in Maidstone, added: “We are sick of the failures by these water companies. Once again we have residents relying on bottle water drops. We need action now.”
One easy answer is stop building new houses, until a new reservoir is built and up and running
You got there before me, but yes, 100%!
I think most of us in Thanet believe that. So short sighted not to anticipate all aspects of such extensive new house building. Time for you Polly to think of the consequences of your party’s house-building policy and realise that we simply cannot support the thousands of new homes being built in this area. SPEAK UP FOR US. SUPPORT US.
Here we go again when does these councillors not know the reservoirs would be low as rainfall has been low not siding with the water companies it\’s common sense and with the governments constant pushing for more houses in Thanet and Kent there will be a water shortage I was around in the 70s when we had that very long hot summer nobody carried on about it they understood the situation didn\’t moan this is just to score political points and the water 💦 quality Brian Smith Stewart
Thats interesting Brian I was working as a civi engineer in 1976 building the Grain Power station that employed 4,000 people on site, and work came to a halt why….. no concrete! Concrete needs lotsa water, and we had five batching plants on site, which was the largest in Europe at the time, but if memory serves we went 18 weeks without water, and work came to a halt! The same could happen again, so house building could be reduced, or halted due to lack of water for concrete and cement!
In Thanet, Southern Water has delivered water bottles to Priority Service residents. All customers are in supply as normal.
Here is an idea-stop sending water to people in areas where there is no problem yet & may well not be, total waste of time, money & water, until there is actually an issue.
Thousands of new houses going up across Westwood and Birchington. We’re being told to take shorter showers. Go figure where the problem actually is.
Not the new homes, because they’ve not been built yet.
The problem lies with the privatised eater companies who have, for years, pocketed our money and done absolutely nothing to maintain and improve our water supply infrastructure.
Sorry Phyllis, it goes hand in hand ,more houses less water supply and previous local and national government it’s all cojoined
LOTS of new homes have been built in Thanet and surrounding areas in recent years. You really do need to get out more…
17,000 new homes earmarked for Thanet. The average household uses 400 litres of water per day, or 146,000 litres per year.
With 17,000 new houses the total additional annual water consumption is likely to be around 2,482,000,000 litres of water. That’s just in Thanet, not wider Kent.
And you don’t think that will be an issue ?
Yes, it will be an issue in the future.
But the current dire situation has little to do with the number of houses, and much to do with the Waterboard’s lack of investment.
For example, it wouldn’t matter how many or full reservoirs were if local pumping stations packed up.
Maybe it’s the eater companies fault.
Me on Facebook:
Peter Checksfield
Do you believe that this endless building everywhere needs to be paused until we have the infrastructure to cope, Helen for Thanet?
(silence)
The water company said it was having trouble pumping water because of the extra demand for drinking water caused by the hot weather.
So what’s going to happen because of the extra permanent demand caused by the thousands of new houses being built?
The problem lies with the Reform UK council, they are clearly not praying hard enough! They should be adding the lack of water to their prayers, that should do it, and also desalination! There is plenty of water in the sea, use that!