Statement from Anglian Water

We met with representatives of Yaxley Parish Council in February to discuss the ongoing use of tankers at the pumping station in Yaxley. We appreciate that this is extremely disruptive for residents and wanted to provide an update about why we are having to use them and the work we are doing to address this.

The sewer network catchment in the local area covers Yaxley, Folksworth and Stilton. The receiving pumping station for the network is located at the junction of Windsor Street and Main Street in Yaxley and we are finding that the pumping station is becoming severely overwhelmed during periods of wet weather.

We are investigating why the pumping station is becoming overwhelmed and at the moment have highlighted misconnections into the foul water sewer from private homes, other misconnected rainwater connections into the foul network and some points of infiltration due to record levels of ground water.

The pumping station is working as it should but during periods of wet weather we are finding that flows to the network are nearly trebling from 2.268 million litres per day to over 6 million litres per day. To put it simply, the pumping station is being asked to deal with significantly more water that it should have to because of connections into the sewer network that should not be there.

When this happens, we have to introduce tankers at the pumping station to protect the local environment and prevent flooding.

Our teams are working hard to identify the root causes of the problems so that we develop options to permanently address them and submit a business case for potential funding.

As part of this, our teams have been investigating surface water misconnections to the foul drainage system from properties in the sewer network catchment, including from Stilton and Folksworth as well as Yaxley itself.

We do not have control over surface water connections so this makes the work that we are undertaking challenging. To date we have identified 212 misconnections to the foul drainage system.

We are also investigating whether ground water infiltration is having an impact on the system. As a result, we will be undertaking CCTV surveys of the sewer network across Stilton, Yaxley and Folksworth over the coming weeks. Residents in Yaxley will notice that we will be using temporary traffic management in some locations to allow us access to our assets to carry out our surveys. We would like to apologise for any disruption this may cause. It is, however, important that we undertake these surveys whilst ground water levels are high.

Once our CCTV investigations are complete, we will resume our investigations across the catchment into surface water misconnections.

We are currently gathering lots of information as a result of our investigations, and this will provide a clear picture of what we need to concentrate on to improve the current situation.

You may also have seen that we recently carried out works at the local shopping centre in Yaxley. This is where we identified quite a lot of direct rainwater connectivity into the foul water network and we took quick action to remove it.

In addition, we have recently undertaken some work on West End. This was to clear tree roots which had impacted the surface water system, causing the road to flood.

We have also identified a number of places where surface water from roads is incorrectly connected to the foul drainage system and contributing to flooding in the area. We are liaising with Highways to work together on this.

When we have to use tankers at the pumping station, we also have to introduce traffic lights at the junction of Main Street and Windsor Road to help manage traffic in the area.

We do understand that the tankers and traffic management are disruptive for local residents but they are unfortunately a necessity in order to keep the sewer network flowing and customers’ facilities working.

We have listened to feedback from the Parish Council and residents and are doing all we can to get the traffic lights taken down as soon as possible when they are not needed. We do, however, look to introduce the lights when heavy rainfall is forecast to minimise the impact on the sewer network and the threat of flooding. This is why you may sometimes see them in place when it is not raining.

We will keep the Parish Council updated about progress with our investigations and provide a further update to share with you in June. You can also check for issues in the area and report a problem via our website.