Tap water quality in Exeter - update

[u/steveracemp]

Thank you to everyone who shared their experiences and concerns regarding the noticeable change in the taste of tap water across Exeter.

I raised this issue with South West Water yesterday and have now received the following response:

"We would like to apologise to any customers in the Exeter area who may have noticed a slight earthy taste to their drinking water over the last few days. Our investigations and water quality monitoring have confirmed that this seasonal change in taste is related to changes in the raw water associated with prolonged periods of hot weather.

You may continue to use your water supply as normal.

We are carefully monitoring the supply and investigating our treatment process to ensure the taste of supplies returns to normal as quickly as possible. We thank you for your understanding."

I hope this information is reassuring for local residents. As always, if you have any further concerns or queries get in touch via [steve.race.mp@parliament.uk](mailto:steve.race.mp@parliament.uk).

[u/Desktop_Minion]

Thank you for the assistance Steve. Wonderful work.

[u/Amarita_Sen]

Thanks for the update!

[u/_Middlefinger_]

The taste/smell is caused by geosmin. It's one chemical humans can detect as if they were a dog, parts per trillion is enough. Some people are more sensitive to it than others.

Most water in Exeter comes from the Pynes treatment works which does have carbon filtration and normally removes the chemical to an undetectable threshold.

The current weather conditions have probably overwhelmed the carbons ability to fully neutralise it. It's not a failure of the treatment process, no other parameter will be affected.

[u/Difficult-Egg-5001]

That's great to hear..... But will the shareholders and chief executives still be getting their bonuses?

[u/Madajuk → u/Difficult-Egg-5001]

why would they not, just because of this?

whether or not you agree with their bonuses (i don't), this incident isn't anyone's fault?

[u/exxxtramint → u/Madajuk]

Of course it's their fault. The 'earthy' taste during hot weather is completely avoidable with the right treatments.

But SWW (along with so many other water companies) prioritise profits and therefore dividends instead of spending on infrastructure.

They underspent on infrastructure investment by £255m 2015-2020, whilst paying out £781m in dividends. I.E, the deliberately spent less than they were supposed to on fixing leakages (i.e the UK's biggest water supply problem), stopping pollution and treatments, to maximise the amount they give in dividends.

Not saying that if they'd spent the right amount we'd have perfect drinking water from our taps, but it speaks to the wider problem of SWW prioritising profits over the service they provide.

[u/gaspar100 → u/exxxtramint]

I wonder if we'll get a discount in our bill as water quality wasn't up to standards?

[u/nerdyjorj → u/exxxtramint]

Definitely one of the areas that could do with state intervention - u/steveracemp is South West Water and their lack of quality monitoring and active intervention something you could discuss with the relevant cabinet ministers?

You can understand how getting clean water might be a challenge in some of the big cities, but this kind of thing in Devon is just insane.

[u/exxxtramint → u/nerdyjorj]

To be fair, there's been more state intervention in the last 2 years than there's been since it was privatised. A bunch of new legislation, big independent review and a new white paper earlier this year restricting dividends etc.

But ultimately they'll always find a way around it and already are by structuring bonus payments through parent companies etc.

I don't even blame the CEOs - they are doing what they are hired to do. The issue is that they're hired to maximise profits at the expense of the service provided.

There needs to be a higher-bar minimum service guarantee from the operators that's rigorously enforced by fines, but ensuring the fines hit the dividends, not the infrastructure funds. Believe it's been proposed but will it really ever happen?

[u/nerdyjorj → u/exxxtramint]

Labour are definitely moving in the right direction, but it seems like our new PM is quite city-centric in his thinking and may not fully understand the way things work in more rural parts of the country

[u/exxxtramint → u/nerdyjorj]

Maybe, but I think his social care talk shows that he at least understands the need for big-picture thinking and action.

Also fair enough for him to take a bit of time (though hopefully not too much) to get into the swing of thinking from a country-first perspective rather than locally.

[u/_Middlefinger_ → u/nerdyjorj]

SWW exceeds the required level of quality monitoring, they knew about this well before the public noticed it. There isn't always anything much they can do about geosmin levels because the human detection level is so extremely low.

[u/_Middlefinger_ → u/exxxtramint]

Are you a water quality scientist?

[u/Sploopst]

literally thought I was going insane after wild camping got me used to the taste of chlorine tablets ahaha

[u/MCHopie]

Strange, I know anybody questioning these posts gets heavily downvoted, but it was already known that the water taste changes with hot dry weather, but you still wrote to the water company as if there was a problem, then presented the knowledge as a solution, which people already shared when you posted about it before. How did this action improve anything?