Skip to content
‘Please South West Water try my simple plan to end Cornwall’s hosepipe ban’ | Opinion
Having travelled to drought areas, they seem to overcome the drought issue using hosepipes pretty well, writes Mel Wallis, of Wadebridge. For example in the United States what they do is allow hosepipes to be used by ZIP code (postcode) at certain times of the month. Other states do it by different counties and it works well.
I was wondering if South West Water would see sense and take up my sensible suggestion because in my opinion, and that of many of the people I know, they’re taking the hosepipe ban too far. It’s been almost a year now and still no sign of a ban being lifted even though the reservoirs are higher.
A lot of local people are annoyed that certain businesses are exempt and holiday homes are classed as a business under HMRC and allowed to use hose pipes, which seems crazy. I know of instances where holiday homes are filling up and emptying Hot tubs daily with a hosepipe.
Read next: South West Water boss should ‘pack her bags and go’ says MP
Therefore my proposal would be the following divide Cornwall into four areas: east Cornwall, north Cornwall, south Cornwall, west Cornwall. The first week of every month east Cornwall can use the hosepipe, the second week of every month north Cornwall can use the hosepipe, the third week of every month south Cornwall can use the hosepipe, the fourth week of every month west Cornwall can use the hosepipe.
By allowing this it would not affect the levels of the reservoirs very much at all and it would ensure that people are allowed to carry out necessities during the current restrictions.
Get the best stories delivered to your inbox every day. Choose what you want here
There are a lot of people out there who are not registered disabled but are still struggling. My suggestion would mean at any one time only one area during the month can use the hosepipe; it would not be very difficult to work out and the water company could draw up the areas simply by dividing the county into four equal sized sections.
I feel this would be a sensible request and make people more open to accepting and abiding by the hose pipe ban and not with the draconian measure that the private water company has imposed in what is the third wettest county in the UK.
South West Water has recently given £112 million to shareholders when more could have been spent in plugging the leaks. The image of South West Water is not very good at the moment what with all the sewage spills/leaks and restrictions therefore for them to meet part way to help the local community would be a step in the right direction to improve the relations with the public.
Read next:
