Welsh Water lift the boil notice for Flintshire

Dwr Cymru Welsh Water has now lifted, with immediate effect, the precautionary Boil Water Notice issued to customers in parts of Denbighshire, Flintshire and a very small area of Conwy.

Welsh Water Operations Director Peter Perry said; & 147;We are very sorry that we had to issue the precautionary Boil Water Notice a week ago today. We do apologise for the inconvenience we know this has caused and I would like to thank everyone for their patience and for bearing with us whilst we resolved the problem we discovered at the Alwen Water Treatment Works, as a result of our routine testing for water quality.

"Over the bank holiday weekend we have been able to deal with the problem of coliform bacteria found in the water produced at our Alwen treatment works by installing, commissioning and testing new equipment at the works to bolster the disinfection process we employ, and this has enabled us to lift the precautionary Boil Water Notice. All water quality checks at Alwen have been clear of bacteria since Wednesday last week.

"The additional disinfection at Alwen may cause some customers to notice a slightly different taste to their tap water and people should not worry about this change.

"Since we discovered the problem at the water treatment works we have taken over 200 samples of water from throughout the supply area and none of these have shown any cause for concern. Protecting public health has to be, always, our top priority and having found a problem with water quality at our Alwen water treatment works we judged the safest thing to do was to issue a precautionary Boil Water Notice."

Welsh Water does not have shareholders and is owned by Glas Cymru, a not for profit company, on behalf of all of Welsh Water's customers. Welsh Water is the only water company owned in this way and it is the only company to pay a customer dividend, which this year reduced everyone's water bill by £22. In recognition of the inconvenience caused by the Boil Water Notice that was in place for 6 days, including the bank holiday weekend, the Company will be writing to all 70,000 customers directly affected by the Notice and will be making an ex gratia payment of £10 per customer.

We were already planning to invest £14M at Alwen treatment works with this work scheduled to start in 2010; we are currently reviewing how we can bring this forward.

The Boil Water Notice has been lifted following full consultation with local authority health officers and the National Public Health Service for Wales.

If customers have any enquiries about their water supply they should call us on 0800 052 0130 at any time & 150; calls are free from a land-line.