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Climate

Southern Water Meeting with Parish Councillors and Residents

Southern Water Engages with Local Residents at a Meeting at West Ashling Village Hall on the 16th July 2024. Read the meeting notes here.

Published: 17 July 2024

We had a really useful meeting with Southern Water last night, in West Ashling village hall, we also invited Bosham residents along to this meeting.
SW explained their long term plans for this area, from Funtington down to Bosham.
The work in Funtington will start this September with the re-lining of the drains in Church Lane and Watery lane, together with the laterals,(drains on private property) to seal these drains and prevent the egress of ground water. SW have been checking the drains to the north of Watery lane and have found that, as these drains are on higher ground, there is minimal ground water entering them.
Chris Bateman spoke at the meeting last night  informing SW that since Portsmouth Water lessened their extraction of the water at their Woodend site, due to some contamination in this water, there has been an all year round flow of water in the chalk stream in Watery lane, also the residents in Dove Cottage have also noted that their pond has remained full this year for the first time in the 42 years that they have lived there. SW are going to speak to Portsmouth water to see if this action has increased our ground water table this winter, and SW will also look at the springs to the north of the parish. SW are very keen on gaining local information that could help them to understand the problems and to find solutions.
SW are now actively engaging with us and they plan to hold regular ‘Teams’ meetings to which all Funtington residents will be invited to join.
Once the work begins in September we will have one chap on the ground who will be on-site for most of the time, this is Glenn and he will be available to answer everyone’s questions and he will engage with the locals community.
Another issue raised by SW was the issue of some rainwater outlets going into the sewer system, SW will look at properties and buildings and they will advise and offer alternative surface water drainage systems that will slow the flow of rainwater into the sewers. As our system is not a combined system, surface water should not be draining into the main sewers. However, if they find buildings that do drain into the main system they will offer rainwater butts and other alternatives that will slow down the flow of the water and not overwhelm the main sewers during heavy rainfalls.
Meanwhile local residents and I will continue to work closely with SW and Highways to make sure that this coming winter we do not get a repeat performance of last winters chaos.
Local residents and I will also keep reminding SW that we have other issues that need addressing such as the portion of drains in Watery Lane that have ‘bellied out’ and also the MH at the top of Nick’s field which takes the sewerage from Church Lane, where the lateral joins the main flow in this MH at such a sharp angle it prioritises the flow at this point and reduces the flow of the main drain, this can be quite simply rectified by lessening the angle of the lateral as it enters the main flow.
We also still have issues with the flow from the pond down to Concierge camping, as these drains are still full, SW are currently unable to complete the camera survey of them, SW will have a very short period of time now to try and complete this survey as July has been such a wet month and we are due more tankers down this end of the parish today.
Jane Mottershead

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