Hundreds of Telford homes hit by water problems
Water turned brown in thousands of homes in Telford today, prompting almost 1,000 complaints to Severn Trent.
Problems with low pressure caused water to be discoloured. Supplies were restricted to a trickle for many and some areas lost their water completely.
The problems affected several thousand homes and companies in Dawley, Ketley, Ketley Bank, Lawley, Malinslee, Old Park and The Rock.
Engineers from Severn Trent said the cloudy water may have been caused by the heatwave, which saw temperatures today rise to 23C (73F).
The problem started at around 4pm yesterday and normal service was not resumed until this afternoon.
Morrisons worker Chad Davies, 41, who lives in Finger Road in Dawley, said today: "One of my children had a bath last night and left the plug in and when I went in it looked like someone had washed dye out of their hair.
"It's coming through cloudy with a brown tint at the moment. It didn't really affect us too much yesterday but we have a one-year-old who is being fed by bottle so I'm going to have to go out and buy bottled water to feed him."
Retired Joan Vale, 57, from Frizes Leasowes, in Ketley Grange, said: "We've been having very cloudy water. Ours isn't so much brown as white – there are bits of white floating around in the bottom. It has been like it since last night. Our next door neighbour is having the same problems."
Severn Trent spokeswoman Sarah McArthur said: "We know that some customers in the Telford area have noticed a change in their water pressure or in some cases have had their water supply interrupted. We'd like to apologise to customers in the Telford area who may be experiencing interruptions in their water supply.
"The original problem was caused by issues in our local supply network, made worse by high levels of water demand in the current heatwave.
"Severn Trent Water engineers acted quickly and worked through the night and the majority of our customers' supply was restored by midnight."
People living in Dawley Bank were among the last to have their water supplies restored this afternoon.
Twitter users took to the social media site to vent their frustration at the disruption:
