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HISTORY
For some 40 years the water pressure at the end of
Higher Goongumpas Lane has been low and on the odd occasion would drop
to zero. The view of South
West Water was that there were "too many properties on the private supply pipe"
and that it was a private supply and as such not their responsibility
which they said ended at the end of their main in Lower Goongumpas lane
near the property Tailings End.
About seven years ago the water pressure became
unacceptable since it dropped to zero practically every day for about an
hour and it was obvious that someone else had tapped into our supply. SWW
were consulted again but their view remained that "It was
a private matter and nothing to do with them as their
responsibility ended at Tailings End".
About four years ago we requested SWW install a
meter on the boundary of Goon Farm land so that we could check if the
person that was using our supply had tapped into it on Goon Farm land or
in lower Goongumpas lane between Tailings End and Goon Farm. SWW refused
to do this stating again that "It was a private supply, the pressure at
their main at Tailings End was up to standard and anything after that
was a private matter".
About three years ago Mr Symonds from SWW visited informed
us that the owners of Carn View and Harmony Cottage had also complained of low
water pressure and had been advised to install a new supply from
Tailings End to their properties and were in the process of doing this
work. He suggested we join in with them but we did not think that a good
idea partly because of the considerable cost and partly because we were of the view that if
these properties were on the same supply as us (which was very likely)
then the pressure would improve once they had installed the new supply
and disconnected the old. Unfortunately once the new supplies had been
installed it made no difference whatsoever to our supply which remained low
pressure and stopped altogether on more or less a daily basis for about
an hour and we again complained to SWW about this but again they
insisted it was "private" supply and not their responsibility. As it
turned out Mr Symonds' advice was very poor (and expensive) advice because if he had
done what we asked - check the troughs on Goon Farm and on the land Goon
Farm had for sale - then he would have discovered that they were not fed
from behind Goon Farm's meter but were connected to our supply and
furthermore he would have discovered that the low pressure was due to a
serious leak on Goon Farm and not "too many properties on the private
supply".
We again asked SWW to install a meter at the edge of
Goon Farm's land (in Lower Goongumpas Lane) but again they refused however they
did agree to install a meter on our supply at Tailings End late in 2013.
This meter revealed a steady flow which SWW attributed to a leak
somewhere on the half mile of pipe to our properties (approximately half of which
is in Lower Goongumpas lane). SWW then installed a
"logging" meter which they told us indicated a leak of 5 or 6 litres per
minute and also another unknown connection to our supply extracting about 200 litres
per day usually, but not always, around dusk.
On 28 April 2014 SWW sent us a letter stating
they had "found a leak" on the service pipe to our properties and we had
30 days in which to fix it or face prosecution (a copy can be viewed
here). We did nothing about this
as the cost of digging up nearly half a mile of pipe of which at least
half of which is in Lower Goongumpas Lane would be enormous, extremely inconvenient for any residents
in Lower Goongumpas Lane and anyway was it a leak? Was
it on our supply? Or was it on someone else connected to our supply
without our permission? Was it in Lower Goongumpas lane or on Goon Farm
land?
In January 2015 we had another attempt to get SWW
to do something about the problem that our water supply stopped every
day for about an hour but again they insisted "it was a private supply
and our problem". Mr Kevin Bray (from SWW) visited and insisted it was
our problem, there was a leak and it "was
our responsibility to fix it"
otherwise SWW would "take legal action against us". Mr Bray justified
that it
was solely our problem because "when he had cut off the supply to
install a stop tap and meter in 2013 nobody else had complained that
their water supply had stopped". Faced with the 28 April 2014
threatening letter and Mr Kevin
Bray's January 2015 verbal threat of litigation we decided that we had
no alternative but to
do something. We would not employ any of the contractors suggested by SWW but would act as our own contractor. We asked that SWW point out
where our stop tap at Tailings End was located (which they did) and also
asked that SWW re-install a meter at Tailings End (which they did). It was our intention to
install a meter on the boundary of Goon Farm land both in Lower Goongumpas Lane and in Higher Goongumpas Lane (see above map). Mr Tudor
Cornish of SWW refused to lend us meters but we discovered that we could
buy private water meters for about £35. It was our intention, via
these meters, to discover if the leak and/or the other connection(s) to
our supply were located on Goon Farm's land or in Lower Goongumpas Lane
- the idea being to
narrow down the search. SWW installed a meter on the stop tap at
Tailings End on 23 January 2015 at about 11:00 AM which gave us the
ability to turn off the supply so that we could install our own meters
on Goon Farm's boundary without getting soaked and check where the leak
etc was located. Before installing our meters we decided to conduct a
survey of the usage on the supply (not including us as we had collected
enough rain water and stored drinking water to last about a week).
As can be seen our first survey revealed that
97,190 litres of water registered on the Tailings End meter in 7 days
and none of this was due to us as our stop taps were off! This is a
staggering amount of water, enough to fill Carn Brea swimming pool about
every 4 weeks and this wastage has been going on for years. SWW now state they have
their own meter on their main so if they had checked it when we
first complained about low water pressure about 42 years ago it would
have revealed that there was "something wrong".
TO BE CONTINUED
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