As Kenley residents will be aware, on 17th April there was an enormous water mains burst at the junction of Kenley Lane with Hayes Lane.
SES Water will be outside the Co-Op In Kenley on 17th April from 12.00-18.00 to answer questions residents have about the burst, and provide information and guidance of the support schemes offered. The support scheme includes the Priority Services Register (PRS), which provides extra support to people in the event of a water supply emergency.
I also wanted to tell you more about the burst. Last week, I met with SES Water and Croydon Council's Resilience and Emergency Planning team for a debrief on the incident and to understand more about it, including the support offered to people on the Priority Services Register.
The SES team are still determining the exact cause of the burst. They re assessing some of the pumps at Kenley Water Treatment works that pump water through the pipe that burst to understand if there are any modifications that can be made. Pressure shocks are a common cause of burst pipes however, they don’t know for certain that this was the cause in this instance. As SES Water get a better understanding in the coming weeks, they have undertaken to provide an update.
The flow and pressure monitoring system (WaterCore) identified a drop in pressure at 15:30 on 17th April. The customer service team received a call from a member of the public at 15:45 followed by the police at 15:55 advising of the burst.
The burst caused properties in DMA WAR14 and WAR15 to experience an immediate drop in pressure. Two properties in WAR14 were affected with pressure of less than 5m until the burst was fully isolated at 22:00. 22 properties in WAR15 were affected with pressure of less than 5m until the burst was fully isolated. Isolating the burst main at 22:00 caused loss of supply and depressurisation of the distribution network for the whole of DMA WAR15 (531 properties). The diagrams below show these locations:
In total 531 properties were affected, with estimate of 1,279 customers with the water supply interrupted for 25 hours and the road closed for over a week. During the incident, Cllr Kolade and I were in regular contact with SES Water to get a better understanding of the situation and update residents as best we could.
The diagram below shows the timelines on the response:
Through our communications with affected residents, we were concerned that some people on the PRS didn't initially receive bottle water and Cllr Kolade was able to pick up supplies from the bottled water station at All Saints Church and deliver them out. Residents then reported that SES delivered water by 13.00, this is reflected in the timeline above. I do have concerns remaining that it took almost 24 hours to get water out to people on the PRS. SES Water reported at the debrief that they were in direct contact with affected customers through hand-dropped letters and emails.
The repair was very complicated due to the incident also damaging the power cables that were sitting above the burst. This meant that it was unsafe to continue isolating the problem until UK Power Networks was able to repair to power cable. Due to the amount of water, it was difficult to isolate the leak, as illustrated in the photo below.
If you would like to find out more about the incident, or the services that SES Water offers its priority customers - and find out how to get on the register, then do attend the drop-in on Thursday 18th May.
