Stop interference in private spring water

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Private Water Supplies Regulations 2009 – Schedule 4 paragraph: The intrusion of government agencies into citizen's private spring water

 

I would request you kindly take a look at the above legislation quietly sneaked in by the late Big State Nanny Government which Calderdale MBC has been tasked with imposing on us.

 

Essentially it asks intrusive questions about both the water supply and the household. Some of this is undoubtedly more so-called "transformational" government. Far more worrying is the questioning which is designed to allow a bumbling government agency to assess our needs and requirements. We have all been doing this for quite a while already thank you very much. The alternative chaos government intervention would bring is terrifying.

 

Many people here on the hills above Todmorden and indeed on the hills throughout Calderdale depend on water sharing from spring water. It is a complex issue involving water tables, sharing and delicate siting of facilities away from our septic tanks. We gladly accept the necessity for quality control testing every 5 years as a health and safety issue – and already pay for it. But this is an intrusion into our civil liberties and is fraught with disaster – quite apart from heavy-handed government involvement, why change it, if it ain't broke?

 

We already happily regulate our own supplies, paying to maintain pipes and pumps etc. The sites are all proven and workable, to attempt to change them is to court expensive disaster.

 

The extract below is from Mark Thompson, Head of Housing & Environment at Calderdale MBC:

 

The background to this issue is that the  Private Water Supplies Regulations 2009   Schedule 4, paragraph 1, requires Calderdale to initially provide the government with the following information about the private water supplies in our area before 30th June 2010 :

 

(a) the name of the supply, together with a unique identifier;

(b) the type of source;

(c) the geographical location using a grid reference;

(d) an estimate of the number of people supplied;

(e) an estimate of the average daily volume of water supplied in cubic metres;

(f) the type of premises supplied;

(g) detail of any treatment process, together with its location;

(h) the name of the Health Protection Agency in whose area the supply is located.

 

Our existing records are old and probably inaccurate, and the new legislation extends the amount of information we now need to hold.

 

With respect to questions (d) and (e)  these questions  seek to quantify the maximum demand that may be made of a supply. In our questionnaire we chose to simply count bed spaces to quantify this element. The Service can  calculate water demand and supply classification under the regulations  on the information submitted. The latter will allow us to respond to the government, and seek tenders for laboratory services when we recommence testing.

 

Some other information sought in the questionnaire is pertinent to the duty under the Regulations to carry out a risk assessment of each supply and to the general administration of the Regulations, e.g. whose  responsibility it may be to comply with a given requirement.

 

The Regulations provide for the Council to charge for a risk assessment every 5 years. Calderdale has yet to decide what charges to levy as we have yet to quantify the amount of work involved, which in turn will be partly reflected by the information returned in the questionnaires.

 

The letter indicates that we will be writing to users of private water supplies again to outline how the many provisions of the new Regulations apply to them. It is likely that given  the time questionnaires have been returned, and the information assimilated, this will take place in  Summer.

 

Please, please stop this nonsense before it wrecks peoples' lives.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Keith Milligan

Why is it important?

Government intrusion into private water supplies will bring great hardship to individual householders and smallholders. Spring water supplies and aquifers are delicate. Bumbling government intervention risks total catastrophe to a vital resource private individuals already pay to maintain. If it aint broke, don't fix it.

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