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Amanda Davis points to one of the seepages in the Stroud Green road that has been dubbed “leakville” |
Mystery leak gives gardens an unwanted water feature
Firm urged to find source of seepage that floods basements
THAMES Water admitted this week it is baffled by a mysterious seepage that is turning gardens in Stroud Green into muddy bogs.
Unable to locate the source of the water, the company has dubbed Heathville Road, where most of the problems occur, as “leakville”.
Residents estimate that thousands of gallons of water may have poured into their gardens over the past three years.
More recently, with the heavy rain the seepage has turned into torrents of water that in some cases have flooded basements.
Broken Victorian ring mains and a reservoir at nearby Mount View Road have all been implicated in the problem.
Mother-of-three and Ashmount School teaching assistant Amanda Davis cannot understand why the company cannot find the fault.
She said: “The majority of residents in this road have water coming up in their gardens. But despite all the complaints Thames Water don’t seem to know where it’s coming from.
“We get a different expert or engineer every couple of months. They promise to get to the bottom of the problem but nothing happens. I’m really fed up about it.“
Ms Davis, with help from Lib Dem councillor Greg Foxsmith, is now coordinating a residents’ campaign to put pressure on the water company to step up its investigation.
“Every time I try and dig a hole in the garden it fills up with water,” she said.
“It also comes through a brick wall at the back of a garden. About the only thing I can grow in my garden is rice in a paddy field.”
Ms Davis has threatened to withhold payment of a £400 annual water bill on the grounds that she had her own private supply.
“I thought I could sell the leaking water back to Thames,” she said. “They joked that I should make a feature out of the water.”
Cllr Foxsmith, the council’s environment chief, said that the leak was a “shocking waste of water”.
He added: “People pay their water bills and expect a proper service. Thames Water appear completely indifferent to the amount of water being wasted. They don’t appear to have properly addressed the problem. They just seem to pass the buck from one official to another.”
A Thames Water customer relations adviser said that samples indicate that the source may be ground water. “We will continue our investigations until we either pinpoint the cause of the problem and complete the necessary repair, or confirm that the source is definitely notfrom our apparatus,” he said. |
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