Beach Road Water Supply Tower Dismantled!

Regular readers of the blog will remember that the water tower located at the end of Wall Street which was to boost pressure to Beach Road properties on the seaward side of the sea wall had rusted to an unsafe state which concerned several residents in terms of Health & Safety, especially with 6-12 year old children playing near it regularly which was first noticed in the blog posting here

Our Wall Street Sewage Committee Management team, democratically elected of course by a majority of residents several months ago have been also reluctant to work in the sewage shed for the same reasons cited.

This impasse led recently following the recent rains to the sewage system failing to work adequately in terms of flow rate as the sewage outlet mono pump failed and needed maintenance work carried out upon it to get it going again to reduce the levels. This was reported to all residents several weeks ago and they were informed of the situation. As this failed several weeks ago during a dry period, it caused no problem, as tanks 1 & 2 were still very low and the team decided that it could be left until Guy's men decommissioned and removed the tank, which they had already planned to do as the water infrastructure work continued at their project schedule.

Unfortunately the recent heavy rains and due to an increased amount of residents during the period compared to last year - this week it caused a lot of sewage to back up to high levels in the road manholes and something had to be done urgently. After some complaints, and angry exchanges from certain neighbours whose properties form a lower junction point to receive sewage flow from other properties before it joins the main pipe along the road started to complain to us that levels were unacceptably high. The irony of the situation of course was that the person who actually was complaining the most about the system had flatly refused to pay a fair share towards maintenance costs over the last year.

This of course has annoyed the rest of the community who are paying a fair share towards costs immensely, but as much as this was extremely unfair to the majority of residents, it does affect fully paid up users of the system. After the usual inter-road gossip, negativity and non-constructive ill-informed non technical discussions across fences - the more rational active and technically minded members and the elected management team actually started to think about a sensible solution to the complexity of the situation.

Following a lot of heated emails and verbal exchanges, which damaged already terse relationships between the single household and the rest of the community - our efforts to use this situation to accellerate the current Beach Road water infrastructure work achieved a suitable mutually acceptable solution for all parties.

So I'm very glad to say and report that Guy Smith brilliantly realised our desperation and difficulty that was threatening our community in Wall Street and promptly organised his men rapidly over the last 2 days despite being very busy with harvesting first bypassing then removing the dilapidated tower today so that work on the sewage system in Wall Street could re-commence.

A good result for everyone concerned, and Andy Haynes and I (as I've taken a day off work today) immediately took the opportunity to re-enter the sewage shed and started work looking at what was needed for the pump maintenance, he will report back to the committee and inform us of any parts that are required to get the pump working again, so we can reduce levels in the system asap and we will then inform residents of the work done in the usual way after consulting with the committee.

We'd like to thank Guy for all his efforts, something I of course did personally in a meeting with him earlier today, where I reassured him that it was another step towards positive communal cooperation.

Superb Collection of Photos of Lee-Over-Sands

Found this today - an amazing collection of photos of our Area, covering almost every subject - from aerial shots (like the one below) to local nature - even Bob the nature reserve warden has a photo on here.

To see them all use the link below - it has almost everything photographically taken in digital form trawled from several different websites - such as Flickr etc - all collected conveniently in one place... under the name "Lee-Over-Sands" tons of brilliant photos!

Enjoy - worth bookmarking this one and revisiting, as I'm sure new photos will be automatically added.

http://www.fluidr.com/places/United+Kingdom/England/Lee-over-Sands

New Water Supply is switched on - old one is now off

Residents will find today that the old water supply pipe from Smith's Farm's land that has supplied Lee-Over-Sands since Andrew Smith  installed it 30 years ago has now been permanently decommissioned and disconnected.

The Original Pipe route (approximate)

The New Pipe Route

Workers from Veolia and Smith's Farms over the last few days have today as promised made sure Wall Street's new water main that has been laid from Lee-Wick-Farm is fully operational - and ready for householders to connect up to today.

Those of us who are able-bodied and technical and keen to do DIY have already connected ourselves up having prepared for this last week with a mix of pipes and adapters supplied by Guy - and our own fittings provided by ourselves (e.g. for new stopcocks etc). I for example took this as a perfect opportunity to fit totally new pipework coming in to my already renewed pipes inside the house. I can report my water connection is done - the new water works and seems a similar pressure/flow rate - although apparently there could be some chlorine still in the pipes for a couple of days until it flushes through the system, so we're being careful and using pre-bottled drinking water until we get the all clear.

Currently some some of our other older residents are today being helped to connect by John (a plumber contracted by Guy to help) who is supervising and on call to any residents who need help reconnecting to the new supply where the pipes connect into their houses under their floors etc.

Diagram showing recommended connection details for a new pipe main supply going into a building

Work is proceeding on Beach Road's new pipework in the meantime, with the new pipe going around the back of Wall Street and across the sea wall, Guy Smith's workforce are now starting to organise its path across the sea wall at the end of Wall Street.

Although we haven't heard any firm details yet It looks like the old water tower that supplies Beach Road (at the end of Wall Street) is being bypassed - which makes sense as it has recently been condemned as unsafe due to its supports rusting by the local council and thus is to be dismantled and removed asap (presumably sometime after their new pipe is connected up).

Water Supply - Wall Street - changeover date announced for new main

Guy Smith has advised residents that they will be put onto his new water main supply on Monday 4th of July as most of the work on the main route along Lee-Wick Lane towards Beach Road and pipework to each home in Wall Street is now in place - and awaiting Veolia's inspection/chlorination to sanitise it before use.

Residents will have to change their homes over to use the new incoming pipes on Monday, when the old existing pipe network installed by his father Andrew Smith (almost 40 years ago) will be disconnected. A plumber will be on-hand all day in Wall Street if things go to plan date-wise to help any residents connect who cannot do it themselves or have difficulties.

The new water supply connection as before will be owned by Smith's Farms - the hope is that residents will agree to become a billing entity (or that someone will take on the individual responsibility personally for the billing and subsequently charge residents based on usage via the meters which will be installed on the new pipe where it enters each property's land). Guy also hopes that in the long run his efforts at doing the pipework installation to Veolia "spec" will result in the company eventually adopting the system, which in the long run could remove the need for shared billing - so individual homeowners are billed by the water company either at a fixed annual rate or based on their water meter reading.

As part of agreeing to a shared billing system for the houses on the landward side of the sea wall, there are still related issues to resolve with regards to easements (access to land to maintain the pipe) which Smith's Farms has come up with some good solutions to - which were proposed in a recent letter to all householders, along with a map showing the work done and Guy's proposals for the eventual changeover to the new supply.

With this in mind I would advise that all residents soon need to look into addressing the legal issues with regard to this and getting a written agreement from Smith's Farms which outlines and guarantees future access/usage with regards to maintenance before they hand over their £1000 per property contributions for the new supply pipework/work that Smith's Farms has asked for.

UPDATE: Guy's letter to residents is below for those residents who might not have seen it:
Click on each image below to read/view them in detail:

Fishing nets reported on Lee-Over-Sands beach

Local Sea Fishing fans have reported seeing fishing nets on our beach, anchored with Buoys almost 150 yards out from the shore - click here for more details