Cryptosporidium - is anyone having to boil their water?

meddijess

Whitewavemark2 I agree with everything you have written, but I don't think Labour's plans go far enough. The water industry should be taken back into public ownership, and I would not give a penny to the shareholders in compensation. They've had more than enough from the British taxpayer. I realise that Keir Starmer will face tremendous difficulties when he becomes PM, but water really should be the number one priority

This. Remember when all our utilities were being sold off and the adverts all added the warning (in tiny letters right at the end) that 'shares may go down as well as up'?? Now's the time to prove it...! 😡

At least under public ownership vast salaries and dividends wouldn’t be paid out, plus we’d know who to lobby for improvements. These huge salaries haven’t attracted the best have they? Just the best at feathering their own nests.

I suspect that most of the electorate are more than willing to take a chance on improvement under a new government.
Yes, MaizieD, water quality it THE one thing that will sway my vote this time. Especially after our Tory Devon MP showed his foolishness over this issue.

I sympathise with everyone who is having to put up with unclean and, in some instances, infected water. It really makes me appreciate my bore hole which is nowhere near anything to contaminate the water. A recent fully fledged water test (done as I did think about moving and this test was required if I was selling) verified this.

Germanshepherdsmum

There is absolutely no guarantee that this would not happen if the water industry were nationalised.

I suspect that most of the electorate are more than willing to take a chance on improvement under a new government. Nationalisation makes more sense to them than contributing to shareholder dividends

I see in the FT that OFWAT is proposing that water companies set up PFI deals to raise capital for renewing the infrastructure. Hmm. We know what PFI has done in the past...

Whitewavemark2 I agree with everything you have written, but I don't think Labour's plans go far enough. The water industry should be taken back into public ownership, and I would not give a penny to the shareholders in compensation. They've had more than enough from the British taxpayer. I realise that Keir Starmer will face tremendous difficulties when he becomes PM, but water really should be the number one priority

My friend who lives in Brixham has been saying since last weekend that she’d been feeling very ill but didn’t know why. Nothing on the news about it. SWW were still telling people that the water was safe until suddenly a big U turn very late in the day after they couldn’t deny it any longer. She is in her late sixties, lives alone up a very steep hill and couldn’t manage to bring a pack of water up from the distribution point, so was just continuing to boil it. Apparently it was going to be a hassle for them to give her just one bottle to carry as it had to be given out in packs.

There is absolutely no guarantee that this would not happen if the water industry were nationalised.

I'm appalled! I have a house in Brixham and I have no idea how we can trust the water in our pipes and tank now. I look after someone who is neutropenic, it's a disgrace and he could have been killed if he'd caught crypto, an ' accident' waiting to happen. We need water taken back into public ownership except it's been effectively asset stripped for the benefit of shareholders!

Every day we see people rowing up and down preparing for races, and sometimes even young children learning to paddleboard or in canoes and kayaks falling into the river. I do wonder how many of them contract illnesses from this.

Mt61 There is also a piece in the Times on the fouling of Lake Windermere.

I heard somewhere that raw sewage was being pumped into lake Windermere??
My niece was only swimming in there last month😩

The Times newspaper is running a campaign, Clean it up, and in today's paper there is a comment from the managing director of Severn Trent that the incidents from her water company whose sewage spills rose by a third last year , "did not make her feel good".
She was awarded £3.2 million in pay, bonuses and shares last year.
The leading article writes that the water and sewage industry is failing the consumer while excessively rewarding company executives and shareholders.Too true.

M0nica

Last week R4's programme, The Briefing Room, looked at the water industry, in particular Thames Water.

If you want to know the full horror of how the owners of water companies have stripped £billions in dividends out of these companies and not invested a penny. I recommend a listen.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001yxl5

It's even worse than this, Thames Water in particular has borrowed money to pay dividends - really this should be picked up by auditors as it is not "prudent" which public companies are required to be. Now they have huge debts due to this as well as an appalling pollution record.
My husband was a consulting water engineer, working all over the world for the World Bank on improving water. We now live overlooking the Thames and very regularly see that the water is scummy and obviously polluted, he believes that there really is no excuse for it.
So much for Margaret Thatcher suggesting that privatisation would raise money for improving infrastructure.

We had this a few years go in the Fylde area where services are operated by United Utilities. It went on for a few weeks and while they were quick to offer/pay compensation (£55 I think) there was no bottled water distribution and supplies quickly ran out at local supermarkets some of whom raised their prices considerably. Were were never told what the cause of the contamination was at a local water tower. We were fortunate in that we didn't contract any of the nasty illnesses that many others suffered from

I'm sorry to hear that sazzl, especially after the illness your dogs suffered recently. We too are SWW customers and they really are a disgrace, despite being the most expensive supplier nationwide I believe.
Interestingly I am in France now, and no one exits the supermarket with a trolley of less than 6 big bottles of water, and no one I know drinks from the tap. I have just paid 2€ 20cents for 6 x 1 litre bottles.

How long ago was it that we had the thread about sewage in the boat race water?

And now it is one of the top stories in the Guardian online. Bad news for tourism and very worrying for the ordinary people affected.

sazz1 I really feel for you and I keep thinking about how the poor people who are already ill are coping with this.

PS my ipad is insisting on spelling 'bureau' incorrectly. 😱

That sounds desperate, sazzl. I hope you continue to be safe. I'm sure all posters on here will be hoping the same for you.

And thank you, Callistemon, for finding Commons Library paper. How very prescient they were. I seem to recall leave voters pooh poohing any suggestions that leaving the EU might lead to lower standards generally. Once we leave, we were told, and are no longer dictated to by those unelected Brussels bereaucrats we can legislate for much better environmental standards. 😡

I suspect that if the UK still manages to attract tourists in the future they will all come clutching massive bottles of water because, knowing how information gets mangled, they will believe that all our drinking water will make them ill.. I think the bottled water suppliers will be rubbing their hands in glee and stepping up production....

The latest I've heard is that it's been around since late April in Brixham and is now in Paignton too. South West Water have identified a leaking valve as a possible cause. Researching it on the Internet you need to boil water at a rolling boil for 3 minutes to kill it. It's not killed by sea water, bleach or chlorine in a swimming pool, or by disinfectant. Britax filters don't stop it either. It needs temperature above 50C to kill it.
Yes I'm paranoid about it as we live around 10 miles from Paignton where its spread to. A few confirmed cases where I live too on our local site. I'm boiling water in a big saucepan on the hob for our dogs and us. Our dogs have only just recovered from guiardia from drinking muddy puddle water so catching this would probably make them very ill. On local news the 'experts' say it can last up to a month and you can still be infectious to others for weeks after. Incubation is 2-10 days.
Feel desperately sorry for those who have businesses in Brixham. It looked like a ghost town on TV yesterday.
SWW ignored reports of positive cases for weeks before Public Health got involved. They are now saying hundreds of cases as figures are rising rapidly.

The UK was branded “the dirty man of Europe” when it joined the EU in the 1970s, partly due to the polluted state of its beaches. Since then, significant improvements have been made, and in 2016 96.5% of UK bathing waters (609 out of 631 sites) passed EU standards—announced as the “best on record” by the Government.

In a nutshell, the predominant Brexit concern for bathing waters is that without the threat of large fines for breaching EU requirements and an independent EU regulator keeping tabs on progress, the impetus for improvement may be lost, standards may slip, and in the worst case scenario the UK could return to being the “dirty man of Europe”.

These concerns are countered with the Government’s commitment that it will “keep working to improve our environment” along with the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill which aims to incorporate EU law into domestic UK law “wherever practical”. MPs have been assured by the Department for Exiting the EU that the Government will “ensure we maintain at least the [bathing water] standards that we have maintained in the past”. It’s worth remembering here that the UK was never 100% compliant with EU requirements and had the discretion to de-designate sites, thereby taking them out of EU requirements.
commonslibrary.parliament.uk/what-does-brexit-mean-for-the-uks-beaches/

MaizieD

Louella12

fancythat

Can we say for 100% that it wouldnt have happened under public ownership?

No, of course not.

We seen to forget that sewerage was regularly pumped into the sea and rivers.

We live near the coast and as children we'd be at the beach to count how many sanitary pads we could count. At the time we didn't know what they were obviously. But mum was always telling us not to touch them!

I have no idea how old you are, Louella12, but we had seen big improvements in water quality since I was a child as a result of joining the EU and conforming to regulations to stop pollution of the seas and inland waterways. It seems to be no coincidence that since the Brexit vote water quality has rapidly gone downhill again...011

Yes, our rivers were largely in excellent condition, there were instances of the law being broken, but you could swim relatively safely.

Pre-EU law, some of our rivers including the Thames were dead.

Louella12

fancythat

Can we say for 100% that it wouldnt have happened under public ownership?

No, of course not.

We seen to forget that sewerage was regularly pumped into the sea and rivers.

We live near the coast and as children we'd be at the beach to count how many sanitary pads we could count. At the time we didn't know what they were obviously. But mum was always telling us not to touch them!

I have no idea how old you are, Louella12, but we had seen big improvements in water quality since I was a child as a result of joining the EU and conforming to regulations to stop pollution of the seas and inland waterways. It seems to be no coincidence that since the Brexit vote water quality has rapidly gone downhill again...011