Guernsey Water is reporting a significant rise in calls from customers as heavy rainfall continues to create surface water issues across the Island.
The utility’s teams are currently working at full capacity to handle problems caused by increased water flows and a saturated water table across the island. Met Office rainfall data for January recorded 188.4mm rainfall compared to a 30 year average (1981-2010) of 92.5mm.
Steve Langlois, Guernsey Water’s Managing Director, confirmed a combination of the wet weather, staff self isolating and social distancing protocols due to Covid-19 were also having an impact.
“Our Belle Greve Wastewater centre has coped well with significantly increased flows, but elsewhere across the island we are experiencing flooding and surface water issues. Our wastewater pumping stations are running at capacity, so much so that we have just installed a temporary pump to help relieve pressure and divert flows from our Les Landes station in order to help alleviate upstream flooding.
“A further challenge for us at this time is reduced team sizes due to Covid restrictions and self-isolation currently taking place, with this in mind we would like to ask our customers to bear with us, our teams are working as hard as they can, we are responding to emergency calls and the most urgent cases first, this generally means the imminent threat of flooding into customer homes.”
Steve added: “We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our customers for their understanding so far; we’re all in this together”.
Despite these issues, which are centred around a number of flooding hotspots, the utility is reassuring customers that water supply and wastewater services are being provided as normal.
