Almost a month after South West Water identified the cryptosporidium in its network and advised 16,000 customers to boil their water before drinking it, the Boil Water Notice still remains in place for over 2000 customers in the Brixham area.

This morning the utility has lifted the boil water notice for 21 customers supplied off the Hillhead to Boohay water main, meaning they can now return to using their tap water as normal.

However, South West Water is still advising around 2,073 households in the wider Hillhead, upper Brixham and Kingswear areas to continue to boil their drinking water before consumption. They are served by a separate system that continues to be flushed and cleaned to ensure the water is safe to drink.

Today's decision was made in line with the principles agreed with the UKHSA and the local authority's Environmental Health department. This follows extensive efforts in recent weeks by South West Water teams to clean and flush the affected areas of its network.

While the water company has identified, removed and replaced the source of the contamination (a damaged air valve installation on private land), it is still in the process of carrying out an extensive, and thorough cleaning operation.

The water company said it has been using multiple, industry leading approaches to completely remove the presence of Cryptosporidium ‘oocysts’ from its network.

This month South West Water engineering teams have installed ultra violet (UV) treatment and specialised filters which will act as additional measures to protect the water from future contamination - UV treatment started at its Boohay water supply tank on 11 June while UV became operational at its Hillhead water supply tank from 4 June.

This means South West Water now has a double layer of protection using UV and specialist microfilters across the Hillhead and Boohay water supply networks, to provide additional barriers. Water quality monitoring will continue across the network for the foreseeable future.

David Harris, Incident Director at South West Water said:

“We are preparing for a phased approach to lifting the boil water notices as our progress to clean and protect the network develops. This will allow us to give people access to clean and safe drinking water quicker, where it is safe to do so. We have completed ‘ice pigging’ of the Boohay network – this more aggressive approach to remove cryptosporidium utilises ice crystal technology, to scrape mineral deposits off the sides of the pipes. We also have a double layer of protection in place including the installation of microfilters and results show that our interventions are working. We will proactively contact our customers when we are able to lift any boil water notices and will provide them with all of the necessary information and support.”