Recent flooding in Hounslow is a result of ‘sewer abuse’ says Thames Water. The torrential rain that Hounslow saw at the end of last week resulted in numerous roads being flooded after the waste water drains could not cope with the volume of water.
Local residents had complained that the problem happens because of two tight sections of pipe under a local sports field. However, when Thames Water investigated, they found this not to be the case.
A Thames Water spokesperson stated in the Hounslow Chronicle:
“A blockage-clearing crew attended on Monday and was unable to sort out the problem because the manhole we need to gain access to the drain from is on a nearby sports club’s land.
“We sent engineers back out to the site on Tuesday to firstly clear the blockage and, secondly, feed a video camera into the drain to establish exactly what’s down there.
“As for what caused this blockage, we strongly suspected it was a build-up of food fat wrongly washed down household drains.
“Putting anything other than human waste and loo roll down drains is what we call sewer abuse.
“Every year we spend about £12million clearing around 55,000 sewer blockages. And about three-quarters of those are caused by sewer abuse.”
Thames Water recently launched a campaign called ‘bin it – don’t block it’, where they asked residents to take more care about what they put down their drains.