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  • 2 hours ago
Villages outside Ashford have now gone three days without water, after supplies became compromised in Charing, Challock and Molash on Saturday.

As of this morning, a spokesman for South East water said 250 properties remain impacted after a pump issue caused problems pushing water to higher ground.

Meghan Shaw reports.


Transcript
00:00We pay our water and we expect service and we're not getting it.
00:04Sunshine and a barbecue sounds like an ideal way to spend a bank holiday.
00:09But for Janet, who's had no water since early Saturday morning,
00:13she's had to ask her guests to bring water rather than wine.
00:17It's very difficult, very difficult, can't wash up.
00:21I've had to use a bottle of water to boil my vegetables,
00:24wash my, you know, the potatoes and lettuce and stuff.
00:28Yeah, it's just very inconvenient.
00:31Why the hottest weekend? Why does it break down?
00:34Why isn't it serviced properly? You pay all this water bill.
00:40Yeah, I've been very stressed this weekend.
00:43Three villagers just outside of Ashford have had their water supply fail
00:48and while the taps might be flowing again for most,
00:52those who live on higher ground, like Janet, are still left parched.
00:56Now, it's not the first outage for South East Water,
01:00but this weekend has been extraordinarily hot.
01:03It's just gone noon and the temperature's already above 30 degrees.
01:07Saturday and Sunday were similar temperatures.
01:10Trollock had an outage on Saturday.
01:13The residents say the bottled water station wasn't set up
01:17until residents had gone without a drop to drink for hours.
01:21Yeah, quarter to nine apparently it went off.
01:23It must have been seven-ish, maybe half six, seven-ish,
01:27when they started setting up over at the village hall for the water station.
01:31So we thought, right, OK, this is going to be ongoing.
01:34There was no collection site either then.
01:36We didn't get that until very late.
01:38And then we couldn't collect none on the night,
01:40but we could collect it the first thing on Sunday morning.
01:44So, yeah, because there was trouble with, I don't know, the lorry or whatever it was.
01:50I can't remember now what was going on.
01:51But no, there was no water supply at all.
01:53No one just had none.
01:55South East Water said,
01:58around 250 properties in the Charing, Chullock and Molash areas
02:02have been impacted by water supply issues,
02:05including low pressure or no water.
02:08This follows a technical failure at our pumping station near Charing,
02:12which means we have struggled to push water to properties on higher ground.
02:16We're sorry to all impacted customers for the disruption caused.
02:21We know water supply issues during hot weather are deeply frustrating
02:25and incredibly inconvenient.
02:27But for those in the Weald without water,
02:30there's no timeline of when supplies might return.
02:33So until then, they're left thirsty for a resolution.
02:38Megan Shaw for KMTV, In The Weald.
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