Sewer pipes serving the village have burst every winter for the last six years, flooding streets and farmland and causing environmentally damaging sewage to spill into the River Wey.
The £500,000 project will see nearly a mile of 'rising sewer main' - pumping sewage uphill, rather than letting it flow downhill under gravity - replaced with tough new pipe taking wastewater for treatment to Alton Sewage Works.
Martin Baggs, Thames Water’s chief executive, said:
"The sewers in Holybourne have been repaired a number of times but this has not solved the problem, so we have decided to completely replace the main sewer pipe that serves the village
."Sewer flooding is unacceptable and we are committed to putting an end to it. We are really sorry for the repeated floodings in the past and can assure the residents that we are doing everything we can to prevent this happening in the future."
The work, which will mainly be done on private land, is due to start at the end of October and will take three months to complete.
With the UK government demanding a 50% reduction in storm overflow spills by 2029, the era of reactive management is over. Speaking in the House of Commons on 21 July 2025, then environment secretary Steve Reed said, “This Government will cut water companies’ sewage pollution in half by the end of the decade.”
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