Surrey residents have demanded they be paid compensation as they face a third day without drinkable tap water following a suspected petrol station fuel leak.
Locals in the picturesque village of Bramley have urged Thames Water to pay back customers for the huge disruption caused after the water company issued a ‘do not drink notice’ over fears that the water supply has been contaminated.
A total of 616 homes in have been told their water is currently unsafe to drink following the discovery of hydrocarbons — a chemical compound which forms the basis for crude oil, natural gas and coal — on Thursday.
Since then residents have been forced to travel to two bottled water stations in the village to collect water that is safe to drink.
It is unclear when the issue is expected to be fixed, with residents taking to social media to demand compensation payments from Thames Water following the chaos that has been imposed on their lives.
Replying to a post by Thames Water on X, Ruth D’Silva wrote: ‘You can make it up to everyone by promising not to dump raw sewage in rivers and seas, forgoe (sic) your huge bonus to give compensation and if you locate a moral compass, hand yourselves in for nationalisation.’
Don’t drink the tap water yourself or give it to pets
Don’t prepare or cook food using tap water
Don’t use tap water to brush your teeth
Don’t use tap water even after boiling
You can use tap water to wash and to flush the toilet after use
Michael Graves also added in response: ‘What about compensation for residents because of your failure to provide drinking water fit for human consumption?’
Others have also called on local MP and Chancellor of the exchequer Jeremy Hunt to step in and help solve the issue.
Lloyd wrote on X: ‘So after being told a few days ago that our water was OK to drink, we wake up to this. Dogs thrown up all over the kitchen floor.
‘@thameswater @Jeremy_Hunt how do we get compensation for the £30 a month you charge us. Not acceptable. This has been known for weeks.’
Another local resident also vented their frustrations over the lack of support the village has had since the notice was put in place.
They said: ‘Country’s falling apart at the f****** seams as a consequence of rampant privatisation but our two main political parties just do not give a s*** about anyone but themselves.
‘People are just getting ‘letters and bottled water’ as if that’s reasonable f****** compensation for paying extortionate water bills for dirty, unsanitary and unusable water. Who’s going to get fired for this????’
Sian Jones, 58, said: ‘My 20-year-old daughter is disabled and needs to be fed through a feeding tube.
‘That requires water, and so this is a pain.
‘The concern also is that this was caused by a leak from 2016 – so have we all been drinking water with low levels of petrol for a while?
‘We don’t know when this started for sure. So it’s definitely a worry in terms of the health impact.’
Thames Water has been regularly collecting and assessing water samples in Bramley following a historical fuel leak at the petrol station.
She added: ‘If it all gets cleaned up and the water gets working – and the petrol station stops poisoning us all – then happy days.
‘But we don’t know when that’s going to be.’
Mother-of-three Victoria Seagrim, 45, is also worried about the health impacts – particularly as her daughter has been ill for the past week.
She said: ‘My 13-year-old has been nauseous and vomiting recently, so I’m obviously now thinking, is this because of the water?
‘Of course, it could be a coincidence – but we just don’t know.’
Ms Seagrim said she had to rush down to the library to collect water in the middle of her working day.
‘I work full-time but I’ve had to come down here to get water – particularly as the kids are on half term and they all drink about three litres a day,’ she said.
‘It’s stressful because we don’t know when it will be fixed. It could be days – could be weeks.
‘We also don’t know how long the water has been contaminated. How long have we been unknowingly drinking it?’
Heather Aitken, 72, had similar concerns. She said: ‘To get a message saying, ‘Don’t drink the water’… It’s shambolic. That shouldn’t be happening in a First World country.
‘It’s a huge health concern. I feel particularly sorry for the people with young kids.’
Ms Aitken also said that the water wasn’t the only thing the petrol station is affecting.
She said: ‘The petrol station – and all the works – is causing these ridiculous traffic jams.
‘So I live on the high street – and I’m also disturbed by all the fumes. We’re breathing it all in and it’s awful.
‘The thing is – none of us want the petrol station to be reinstated. We don’t need it. We have other ones. So it’s causing all these issues and no one wants it.’
Another local, who did not want to be named, agreed. ‘I’m moving out of the village because of the constant traffic caused by all the works,’ he said.
‘It’s a shame because I love it here – and I try to support all the local businesses because they’re being affected by the loss of footfall, but it’s just unsustainable.’
Samples collected on Thursday after a fuel leak from the village petrol station suggested ‘a possible deterioration in quality’ of drinking water ‘in some areas’.
Households in Bramley have been warned not to drink their tap water or use it for cooking, or brushing their teeth, but they can continue to use the water to shower and wash their hands.
Two bottled water stations have been set up in the village at Bramley Community Library and Artington Park and Ride and will be open until 9pm tonight.
The warning threatens to be an election setback for Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, the MP for the constituency.
The Conservative MP yesterday had a call with the UKHSA, DEFRA, Thames Water and Asda who acquired the village petrol station.
Mr Hunt held a meeting with Thames Water CEO Chris Weston in April to discuss water outages, slow compensation payments and sewage spills. He is due to hold another public meeting in June.
A Thames Water spokesperson said: ‘On Thursday 30 May, we issued 616 Bramley properties with a ‘do not drink’ notice following recent water sampling results.
‘We delivered bottled water to our vulnerable customers and the homes affected by the notice, along with letters outlining the advice.
‘The ‘do not drink’ advice will remain in place while further investigations are carried out. During this time the affected customers are advised:
‘Don’t drink the tap water or give to pets; don’t prepare or cook food using tap water; don’t use tap water to brush your teeth; don’t use tap water even after boiling; can use tap water to wash; can use tap water to flush the loo.
‘We have also set-up two bottled water stations at the following locations:
‘Both locations will be open daily 9am to 9pm, while we manage this incident, and further bottled water deliveries are planned across the weekend’
‘The health and safety of our customers is our number one priority, and we would like to reassure residents that this is a precautionary measure.
‘We are already on site in the village proactively replacing sections of our pipes on Horsham Road to reduce the risk to our customers. We estimate the work will take at least 3 to 4 weeks, and we will be guided by the results of sampling and will continue to keep customers informed.’
It comes as cases of cryptosporidium, a parasite that primarily infects people through faeces-contaminated drinking water has now reached 100.
Most of the infections are in Devon but outbreaks have also been reported in Oxfordshire and Worcestershire over the past two months.
The most serious outbreak relates to faecal-contaminated drinking water in Brixham, Devon, which started earlier this month.
However, dozens more Brits, including children, have fallen severely ill since the end of March after outbreaks at petting farms.
Whole streets in Brixham have been infected with victims forced to endure days of diarrhoea and agonising stomach cramps, with one sufferer even comparing them to ‘childbirth.
Residents have been forced to boil water for over a week to make it safe to drink, with some shops running out of bottled supplies due to panic-buying.
The source of the outbreak appears to be damaged air valve in the water supply line which ‘may have allowed animal waste or contaminated groundwater to enter the local supply’.
While faecal contaminated water is the classic way people get infected with cryptosporidium there are other ways you could be struck down with the bug.
One of these is direct contact with infected animals, a fate that potentially seems to have befallen dozens of Brits in recent months.
A spokesperson for Thames Water said: ‘Thames Water would like to reassure its customers that the village water supply has been safe to drink up to this point, as confirmed through its rigorous water testing, which has also been subject to regular review working alongside UKHSA throughout this period.’
Tess Fayers, Operations Director for the Thames Valley and Home Counties said: ‘We are asking 616 Bramley properties not to drink the tap water following recent water sampling results.
‘The health and safety of our customers is our number one priority, and we would like to reassure residents that this is a precautionary measure. We are in the process of delivering letters and bottled water to the affected properties.
‘We are also identifying locations to set up bottled water stations, and we will share this information with our customers as soon as possible.
‘We are already on site in the village, proactively replacing sections of our pipes on Horsham Road to reduce the risk to our customers.’
An Asda spokesperson said: ‘We are continuing to work closely with Thames Water and other partners to address the issues we inherited after acquiring the Bramley PFS site. We recognise the impact this has had on the residents of Bramley and share their frustrations. We are committed to working with all parties to resolve this situation as quickly as possible.’
Meanwhile, Britain’s greatest beauty spots and most stunning waterways are being continually polluted by water companies who say it is ‘not cost beneficial’ to upgrade the network to prevent leakage in half of all cases, can reveal.
In the last year alone, beauty spots in Cumbria, the Cotswolds, Cornwall and Sussex have all seen enormous sewage spills blighting the lives of residents and desecrating the natural environment.
Earlier this month, it was revealed million of litres of raw sewage had ‘illegally pumped’ into Lake Windermere in the Lake District after a fault.
Data analysis by shows water firms decided there was ‘no cost beneficial solution’ to prevent 280 discharge sites in England that, due to lack of capacity, pumped untreated sewage into rivers and seas for hundreds of hours last year.
The 280 sites across the country comprise 48 per cent of 582 offending sites – which discharged for a total of nearly 375,000 hours last year – where a decision on whether to resolve the issue or not has been made.