SO, WOULD YOU DRINK WATER THIS COLOUR?
RESIDENTS in a remote Welsh village say their drinking water is unfit for human consumption and they may have to pay £1.5m to sort out the problem.
Thirty or so families in Trecwn in Pembrokeshire say they have been unable to drink their tap water for at least six months, with many parents also worried about bathing their children in it.
Those affected say they have been complaining about the quality of the private supply for more than a year after first noticing either a strong chlorine smell or a dark, dirty appearance not dissimilar to strong tea.
As a result they have been reliant on deliveries of crates of bottled water, dropped off twice a week by a 4X4, in order to get by.
The problem has been occurring along the village’s private Barham Road since summer 2018, the supply coming from a long-disused Royal Navy munitions depot to which the houses once belonged.
Independent tests carried out ear
lier this year displayed levels of iron in the water which were nine times the allowed limit, while its colour also failed tests.
Both the MOD base and the road are owned by London property firm Manhattan Loft Company, which declined to comment, but has previously told the BBC’s X Ray programme that the water is safe upon leaving its processing plant.
It added that the impurities are the result of it passing along old cast iron mains running underneath the road en route to the houses. And Pembrokeshire council say it’s the residents themselves who are responsible when it comes to “maintaining, repairing and renewing” any of the pipework.
“£1.5m is the figure someone was quoted in order to get it all fixed,” says Luke Pieniak, who moved into a house on Barham Road with his wife Alex and their two young daughters in 2017.
“Which is ridiculous, although we’ve had a range of answers so far, depending on who you talk to. I’m not sure how things were left to get this bad, the roads are in a hell of a state too. We pay Manhattan Loft Company for supplying the water so surely they should be responsible for ensuring it’s safe?”
A sergeant in the British Army’s Royal Corps of Signals, the 31-yearold adds that he was worried for the health of several elderly residents on the road the longer the situation dragged out and says his own wife, a law student, has previously become ill.
“She kept getting stomach cramps and ended up going for blood tests but the symptoms stopped as soon as she stopped drinking the tap water,” he says. “Some of our neighbours won’t even wash their little ones in it, instead boiling the bottled water in a kettle in order to fill the bath. I can’t imagine what their electricity bills are going to look like.”