Stop sewage and waste water flooding - Thames Water

Since November 2012 approximately 2.34 million litres of local sewage and waste water a day has been flooding Mill End near Hambleden in Buckinghamshire, RG9 3BG in the midst of the Chilterns making life miserable for the local community with little sign of abating or longterm solutions being offered.

Travelers between Marlow and Henley on the A4155 cannot have helped but notice the 2 x 4000 gallon (18,000 litres) tankers working at the pumping station for up to 16 hours a day without which, the fields, brook and Mill End properties flood with sewage and waste water from the Hambleden Valley, leaving the drains almost constantly full and preventing normal use of basic amenities.

As reported in the Henley Standard recently a number of Hambleden residents have been directly affected with sewage backing up into their houses and the source of the problem may lie with the Thames Water controlled pipe works, laid in 1953.

Various locals have spent hours speaking with Thames Water with only tankers and no longterm solutions being provided to date and calls not returned. The tankers have been essential and locals extremely grateful for the help the tanker companies and specifically the drivers have provided but it is neither an environmentally friendly solution or tenable longterm.

The result of the flooding problems can be seen first hand and local residents have plenty of photographs of flooding and sewage the community has been exposed to over the past months and copies are available on request at local community venues.

It is not only an environmental hazard, dreadful for those directly affected and obviously a horribly high health risk to local children who play in the area and around the brook, fields and weir but this beautiful valley is a popular tourist destination and the sewage and paper products in the fields and main footpaths around Hambleden will surely start impacting local businesses - the lovely pubs, B&B’s and hotels in particular, if improvements are not made soon.

The residents at Mill End have flooded basements and regularly endure having to drive and walk through several inches of sewage and waste water to access their homes; one resident 20 yards from the pumping station also has to contend with regualrly having his garden submerged.

At another Mill End home - the last property on the pumping circuit, the sewage and waste water backs up in the drain in the garden if it cannot go anywhere else, regularly rendering it impossible for the tenant to use water in the bathroom and kitchen when they want to, at risk of the already full drain overflowing into the local environment. This resident hasn't put any paper in the loo since November 2012 and only uses environmentally friendly products but if the tankers don’t pump almost all day, their sewage and other people's sewage, toilet paper and chemicals overflow from the man hole onto the massively busy Chiltern Walk public footpath, into the car park, often merges with the high water in the brook and from there joins all the other waste water flooding into Mill End not captured by the tankers or the pumping station flooding straight into the River Thames and all that entails...