Thames Water – working in Lambourn update

1 April 2020

We wanted to let you know what we’re doing about the sewer flooding in Lambourn, which has happened after high groundwater levels caused extra water to enter our sewers and overwhelm them.

We know this must be an unpleasant and distressing time for your local community. We’re grateful for your patience and understanding as we work hard to put things right.

What we’re doing

So far, we’ve worked hard to reduce the amount of dirty water flowing through our sewers by having multiple tanker vehicles to help us remove sewage from the network as fast as we can. We’re really sorry if the resulting traffic through the area has inconvenienced you.

Unfortunately, the groundwater levels are so high that these actions haven’t been enough to stop the flow of sewage. We take this very seriously and are putting additional measures in place to address this problem.

We’ll place a mobile sewage filtering unit in Newbury Street, near to the fire station, which will run 24 hours a day. A pump will filter dirty water through the unit so that we can safely discharge it. By installing this unit, we hope we’ll be able to move our tanker vehicles around the village to assist in other areas.

In the meantime, we’ll continue to investigate the sewer network as quickly as we can, to understand how the groundwater is entering our pipes. Once these investigations have completed, we’ll review all our findings to understand where we need to concentrate our next work.

How this will affect you

We’d like to reassure you that your drinking water and your wastewater services will not be affected, you’ll be able to use water and flush your toilet as normal. We’re conscious the filtering unit may be noisy, especially at night-time, and we’re really sorry if this disturbs you. Unfortunately, as our network is currently being overwhelmed with excess water throughout the day and night, our filtration unit must always run, to ensure the flows continue to be managed.

Why we’re still working during Coronavirus

As an essential service, we’re dedicated to keeping our water and wastewater services running smoothly. Delaying routine repairs and maintenance can increase the risk of more serious issues such as burst pipes. This would result in greater interruptions and problems for customers, at this already difficult time.

The safety and wellbeing of our customers and our staff is of the utmost importance to us. Our teams are constantly adapting to follow the latest government advice to keep themselves and others safe, while ensuring we deliver our critical services. We are rescheduling non-essential work on customers’ boundaries and are happy to consider any other requests that give peace of mind.

We’re here to help

If you have any questions, please call our 24-hour customer centre on 0800 316 9800 quoting your address and reference number BB973571.

Yours faithfully,

Bell Kelly – Customer Liaison