Heatwave costing Welsh Water extra £1.5m per week
WELSH Water is spending an extra £1.5m a week keeping supplies going to customers as North Wales continues to bask in a heatwave.
It follows the hottest June on record in Wales, with only 24% of long-term average rainfall during the month, which has put an increased demand on supplies.
Dŵr Cymru/Welsh Water tankers and others contracted from West Wales haulage firm Mansel Davies have been transporting thousands of gallons of water from Llyn Cowlyd, near Dolgarrog in the Conwy Valley, to the Cwellyn water works, Gwynedd, in the foothills of Snowdon – more than an hour’s journey.
Llyn Cwellyn, which supplies Bangor, Caernarfon and parts of Anglesey, has constrictive licence conditions limiting the quantities of water that can be abstracted from it dependent on different storage levels.
A spokeswoman said: “We plan in advance for dry weather and this started back in May.
“We escalated this into a major incident response in June and, since then, we have been spending an additional £1.5m per week to safeguard water supplies to our three million customers across most of Wales, Herefordshire and Deeside.
“We have 450 people working seven days a week to fix 140 leaks a day (80 in normal conditions) and we have 40 tankers moving water around our system.
“We are pumping over one billion litres of water a day into our network and, to help move the water around, we are also installing temporary pipelines and pumping stations as well as ‘rezoning’ water to help keep customers in supply.”
Rezoning means moving the water supply for a number of households on to another treatment works through temporary pipelines to preserve water.
She said: “One area we are working hard to move water around our network to ensure continuous supply for our cus- tomers is in the Cwellyn area near Caernarfon.
“We are spending £500,000 a week on using tankers to top up our network at Cwellyn water treatment works to ensure customers in the area have a continuous supply.”
She added: “We are currently supplying Barmouth from Cilfor water treatment works where it would normally get its supply from Eithinfynydd treatment works.” ● If the hot weather continues, Welsh Water could well introduce a hosepipe ban. Dŵr Cymru is asking customers to help by using water wisely and report any leaks on www.dwrcymru.com or call 0800 052 0130.