The decision was made in line with the principles agreed with public health partners, including the UK Health Security Agency and the local authority's Environmental Health department.

South West Water has today announced it has lifted the remaining boil water notices for customers impacted by Cryptosporidium. 674 properties in the Higher Brixham, Southdown, Upton Manor and St Mary's supply zones are now all safe to drink their tap water as normal.

Following eight weeks of intensive interventions, enhanced sampling and monitoring, working alongside public health partners - the network in the Brixham area has now returned to normal and customers, business and visitors can drink their tap water, safely.

David Harris, South West Water's Incident Director, said: “The last two months have had a significant impact on the people and businesses of Brixham and for that we are truly sorry. Nothing matters more than the health and safety of our customers and we are pleased we can now reassure everyone that their water supply meets the high standards they rightly expect.”

Mitigations and actions taken to restore full supply

Since this event began, over 1,000 South West Water network technicians, engineers, water quality scientists and contractors have worked day and night to fix this issue and return the water supply to normal.

The source of the contamination – a damaged air valve casing on private land - was identified, removed and replaced and an extensive programme of work was undertaken to clear the network of cryptosporidium. This work involved:

  • Flushing over 34km of water pipes 27 times at high velocity to clean network pipes and remove cryptosporidium
  • 17 phases of ice-pigging and swabbing the network – a more aggressive cleaning approach that we have carried out on all the pipes between our tanks and customer offtakes in their street
  • Installing ultraviolet (UV) solutions and microfilters to provide barriers to remove cryptosporidium within the network. Now, for all of our customers in the Hillhead and Boohay network, their water supply will pass through at least two of these safety measures if not three before reaching their premises
  • Laying over 1.2km of new pipework to provide future resilience across the network
  • Working with specialists internally and externally to deliver interventions into the existing network safely, efficiently and far quicker than would normally be expected.

 

In order to ensure these interventions have been successful in removing cryptosporidium in the network, and to give customers confidence in their drinking water, South West Water has carried out extensive sampling and monitoring, involving testing by independent experts as well as their own scientists.

Sample results have shown that ice pigging is highly effective in removing cryptosporidium from the network, allowing the supply to return to normal once the work is complete and the network has settled. UV treatment and specialist microfilters then provide protective barriers to ensure customers can be confident that the water is safe to drink.

South West Water has focused on support for customers throughout this incident, and thank all customers, visitors and businesses for their ongoing patience.

In total, the company has given out over a million bottles of water from its three bottled water collection stations and hand delivered 390,123 bottles of water directly to customer homes. With all customers now able to drink their water as normal, the bottled water stations and home deliveries will now stop.

South West Water has held 14 local engagement events and hosted its community engagement van in the local area on 44 different days over the last two months, with both setups aimed at answering customers’ questions or concerns.

South West Water is working with local tourism organisations, businesses and councils to develop a plan to rebuild tourism across the area. 

Background:

Please note that Cryptosporidium cannot reproduce within the water network