Engineers to prevent water pipe bursts in Hathersage

The drop-in session will be held today, Monday, September 1, in the Lawrence Hall of Hathersage Memorial Hall from 1pm until 6pm.

Severn Trent Water programme engineer, Liz James, explains: “Hathersage’s water pipes have grown old, and that means they’ve become brittle and weak.

“There have been a number of bursts in the area, so we must act now to install new water pipes to make sure our customers have a reliable water supply.

“We’ve planned our work carefully and we’ll be installing almost four kilometres of modern water pipes, which are more resistant to bursts.

“This will see us invest almost half a million pounds in Hathersage’s water supply system for the benefit of our customers.

“With such a lot of work to do, to keep workers and the community safe, we will need to have traffic lights in place and close some roads in the village.

“Before we do that, we’d like residents to see our plans and let us know if there’s anything that we can do to make things easier for them while we work. After all, they’re the experts on the area.

“If we can make changes, we will, so that people aren’t disrupted. That’s why we’re encouraging residents to come along and talk to us on Monday at the Memorial Hall, any time from 1pm until 6pm. We find that we can discover those little gems of information, which can make things a lot easier for the local community. Perhaps there’s an event going on like a wedding or a country fair, if we know it’s happening, we’ll do our best to work around it. We plan to start work on Coggers Lane on Monday 8 September, and we expect the new pipes will be serving homes and businesses by May 2015. The improvements will benefit the community for years and years to come.”

The water pipe improvements are being carried out by Severn Trent Water’s contract partner, Laing O’Rourke.

If customers are unable to come along on Monday, Laing O’Rourke can be contacted for more information between 8am and 5pm from Monday to Friday on (01332) 288047.