South West drought blamed on water firm's 'neglect'
BBCA council leader has accused South West Water of helping create the conditions behind a severe drought declaration affecting parts of Devon and the wider South West.
Devon County Council leader Julian Brazil said the drought had been "decades in the making" and the firm's "neglect" had "put us here".
He said the company had "not built the reservoirs Devon's people and businesses deserved".
South West Water said: "We are doing everything we can to manage resources, strengthen our network and fix leaks, and we need customers and local businesses to help reduce water use wherever possible to protect supplies until rivers and reservoirs can recover."
On Thursday, the Environment Agency declared severe drought in parts of southern England including east Devon and west Cornwall.
South West Water's drought programme director Richard Stanbrook said the declaration showed the "critical phase the South West is entering of this exceptionally prolonged drought".
"While some recent rainfall has helped, water resources remain under significant pressure. We continue to rely heavily on reservoir storage to maintain customer supplies while river flows remain extremely low, with no significant rain forecast in the coming weeks."
Wimbleball Reservoir, which serves about 300,000 properties across east Devon, north Devon, Somerset, west Dorset and West Somerset, is at 14.9% capacity and Stithians in Cornwall is at 21.9%.
The Environment Agency said it expected reservoir storage to be about 75% at this time of the year.
After the severe drought announcement, the government said customer supplies would be uninterrupted and declaring severe drought "ensures proactive steps are taken to safeguard water before any disruption occurs".
Water companies have been ordered to monitor reservoir and river levels daily and the Environment Agency is stepping up compliance checks on firms that withdraw water from natural sources.
Brazil called on South West Water to pay for a large-scale public information campaign to encourage water conservation, reduce leakage and bring forward plans for new reservoirs.
He said: "From its own deep pockets, South West Water must fund a huge communications campaign to conserve water, cut leakage, bring forward plans for new reservoirs and make sure it is keeping every customer, business and public body fully informed so we can to do what we can to help."
Brazil also said the company should compensate customers and businesses if they suffered losses during the drought.
"They agreed to pay 10 times the paltry minimum compensation level after the Brixham water poisoning incident. If businesses and customers suffer loss during this drought they must do so again."
He urged people across Devon to use water carefully to help avoid restrictions, warning that any further measures limiting supply could have a serious impact on both the economy and daily life.
"As a council we will be doing all we can to save water while still delivering vital public services but we cannot allow South West Water to fail again and will be holding them to account in the months to come," said Brazil.
Andrea SemmensFarmers have already reported the impact of the dry conditions. Andrea Semmens, whose family runs the 1,500-acre Raftra Farm, near St Levan, in Cornwall, said potato yields had fallen sharply.
"We normally average about 15 to 16 tonnes per acre and just because of the growth and the lack of wate we're looking around 10 to 11 tonnes," she said.
Semmens added: "When you're growing 310 acres, that's quite a lot of tons of potatoes that we've missed out on.
"That's going to have a knock-on effect on our profit and money going forward for our next year's harvest."
About 56,000 households are within the severe drought area in west Cornwall.
