Water shortage in Welsh town ‘rapidly becoming a humanitarian crisis’

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Darren Millar, the Welsh Conservative leader, said the situation was “rapidly becoming a humanitarian crisis” on Friday and criticised the water company’s contingency plans.

“Mums with babies have no access to sterilised water, a number of care homes have received no deliveries of bottled water for the vulnerable people in their care, and domiciliary carers and district nurses are unable to wash people or change wounds,” he said.

More than 20 schools had to be shut, and households forced to queue up at distribution points to pick up water, with vulnerable residents complaining they could not access supplies.

Images from the burst water main at the Bryn Cowlyd water treatment works showed a pipe with a fist-sized hole caused by a rock that had moved within the river bed, according to the BBC.

said it had fixed the problem by Thursday, but that it would take another 48 hours to fully refill the network.

Janet Finch-Saunders, the Welsh Conservatives’ climate change and environment representative, told the BBC that the response from Welsh Water had been confusing and the situation was chaotic.

“Residents have been understandably frustrated by large queues at water collection centres and older residents have been left confused by the lack of clear communication outside of social media from Dŵr Cymru (Welsh Water),” she said.

Welsh Water secured the lowest rating in last year’s rankings from regulator Ofwat, classed as “lagging behind” in its league table.

It was one of three worst-performing companies across the country for supply outage for the second consecutive year, and underperformed on mains repairs.

In May 2023, a burst main at its Tongwynlais service reservoir left 10,000 homes around Cardiff without water.

In a statement, the water company said: “We can confirm that the repair work for the burst water main at our Bryn Cowlyd water treatment works, Dolgarrog, was completed at lunchtime. We are now refilling the network.

“Water supplies will still not be fully restored to all affected customers for up to 48 hours.

“This is a high-pressure water main, and we are at a very precarious stage of the process.

“We need to refill the water main and wider water network very carefully to avoid further bursts.”

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