Thames Water Utilities Limited supplies drinking water to about 7.3 million people living in London and a large part of central southern England. Approximately three quarters of the Company's water supplies come from rivers, principally the Thames and Lee. The remainder is drawn from wells and boreholes. The Company has 99 treatment works and distributes water through a network of almost 31,000 km of pipes and 364 service reservoirs.
Each year water companies are inspected. The 1995 inspection found that the Company's arrangements for sampling, analysis and reporting were suitable except in a few cases and that treatment processes were satisfactory. Progress with improvement programmes was found to be satisfactory. Twenty recommendations for improvements in practices were made.
The quality of the water supplied by the Company in 1995 has been generally very good. 98.9% of the 480,832 tests performed by the Company met the standards - the tests were largely made on samples taken from consumers' taps. Of the 1.1% of tests that did not meet the standards the most significant were for pesticides, coliform bacteria, and nitrite, although the number of failures for pesticides dropped sharply in 1995. There were also some failures to meet the standards for nitrate, iron and PAH.
The graph above shows water quality over the past five years to be good and continuing to improve. The Company, as it must, plans to improve the quality even further. It has given legally binding commitments to take steps to remove pesticides, nitrite, nitrate, and coliforms and to improve its water mains. Some improvements were completed by December 1995, but further improvement work for pesticides, nitrate, coliform bacteria and work on the water mains to deal with iron and PAH is continuing.
If you want more detailed information about the quality of drinking water in your local area please contact the Company. Their telephone number is 0645 200800, calls are charged at local rate from anywhere within the Company's area. |
