Adrian Clarke of Cranleigh Civic Society and Cranleigh Borough Councillor Liz Townsend were interviewed by Surrey Radio this week about the severe pollution problems in the brook that flows out of a culvert behind Marks and Spencer’s car park. The brook problem is also featured on the front page of the current edition of the Surrey Advertiser (Friday 31 March 2017).
Residents have been complaining to Thames Water about raw sewage in the brook for 8 years, and in 2015 Cranleigh Civic Society took samples from the brook and got an independent laboratory to test them. The report, which showed very high levels of e coli, was sent to the Environment Agency who investigated it and immediately put it onto their ‘UK Priority Hot Spot List’.
Cranleigh Civic Society also tried unsuccessfully to get Waverley Borough Council’s Environmental Health Department to help to get this serious pollution issue resolved. We suspect that the reason why Waverley did not want to get involved is because it would jeopardise their hugely unpopular draft local plan. In case you didn’t know this, Waverley wants to dump 44% of its new housing allocation into the Cranleigh area. The same Waverley we all have to pay our very high Council Tax charges to.
Since the Environment Agency got involved, Thames Water has been carrying out tests, putting dyes in outflows and feeding cables with cameras from the culvert back towards the High Street, but with mixed results. Thames Water claims to have discovered several ‘misconnections’ over the last year, but they have been very secretive about the number and locations of these. Misconnections are where a house or a commercial property illegally connects its foul drainage to rainwater pipes either intentionally, or by mistake.
An engineer from Thames Water told us that, over the weekend of 1-2 April 2017, his team had identified eight commercial properties in the High Street that had misconnections; an amazing admission considering that Thames Water have had crews out investigating this problem now on several occasions over the last two years!
The cost of all these investigations so far is huge, the Thames Water engineer told us, and that, as it is unfair to burden their customers with this cost, Thames Water will be seeking to recover the cost from the commercial premises in the High Street.
We are hoping that Thames Water will now issue 21-day notices to the offending premises in the High Street to correct their problems. If the businesses ignore the 21 day notice, they can face large penalties.
Why is all this a problem? Children were seen last summer playing in the brook building a dam, and they often retrieve footballs from the brook when playing on the adjacent field, and people walk their dogs next to the brook (and dogs like to jump into water). Also, the brook joins Cranleigh Waters, a stream that is already heavily polluted and which has caused fish stocks to die out in Bramley.
We will keep you informed of any updates on this story.
