We visited Tittesworth Reservoir in Staffordshire talk about the water levels

We visited Tittesworth Reservoir for a media only talk about water levels and water safety this summer period

Transcript

00:00Yeah, so I'm Doug Clark. I'm the water resources lead for Seven Trent and we're here at lovely

00:04Titterworth Reservoir in Staffordshire today. As you can see, the reservoir's a little bit lower

00:10than we'd like at this time of year and that's basically because we've only had 39% of the

00:15average rainfall that we'd expect to have had in our region over the spring. And so with that,

00:20that means the reservoirs are a little bit lower and rivers across the region are lower as well.

00:24But what's really important is actually we're doing a lot of things on our side to keep leakage

00:28at its lowest ever levels. We've got more guys out there finding and fixing those leaks

00:32and we're also bringing other water sources onto supply as well. So bringing those in to

00:37supplement what we've got. Yeah, so just as an example so we can visualise it, I mean if this

00:40was at like the general regular level, where would the water be coming up to? Would it be

00:46quite close to the bank here or is there any sort of indicator out there that would show where the

00:50water would be? Yeah, no, so it'd be quite a way down actually because we are in the summertime,

00:54we are in the summer period. So it would be would be lower than this, but it wouldn't be quite as

00:58quite as low as it is now. And the weather's like this and it's really hot. The water does look

01:03really inviting. We know that. But actually it's really dangerous to go into the water.

01:09It's incredibly cold. There's lots of hidden dangers down there because as you can see there's

01:13rocks. It's also once you get into the water very, you know, ground soft, very muddy. And so it's

01:19about being safe around water. So love people to come and enjoy the site, but don't go into the

01:25water. Absolutely. And just touching on the safety again, obviously it looks, you know, it does look

01:29fairly inviting, but I can imagine that that water is going to be quite cold. Yeah, it's incredibly

01:35cold and it feels even more so. Yeah, when it's 20, 30 degrees like we're seeing at the moment,

01:41actually the shock between where you are now and getting in the water would be a massive difference.

01:46And so it is really cold, really dangerous. So yeah, we do ask people to to stay out of

01:50the water if they can. Be safe.