Responses to Public Invited to Find Out About Water Quality Testing

1. Victor Howarth Reply

   April 20, 2026 at 1:50 pm

   As I am unable to get to the meeting April 25th to hear about Water Quality I would like to share a few thoughts on the subject.

   I was born in 1947 and spent my first nineteen years living on Hayling Island. I had to trust others to provide water to drink.

   In my first years I drank water from taps connected to both copper and other manufactured water water pipes mostly soldered using lead based solder. New houses built in an estate nearby I know had lead soldered water pipes, as I often found waste solder on the building sites.

   I don’t know a lot about where the water to drink came from as lots of the houses had wells, even on an island, and for a time water was pumped from a central well on the island until at some stage water came from other suppliers on the mainland, in places such as Portsmouth. I was taught that clear water from a tap was drinkable unless notified.

   A lot has changed since those times. I now live in Guildford and where Thames Water is the only supplier since Central Government sold their systems to provide their standard of clean water and to take away all waste water.

   The big problem all water companies have is to take away rainwater. There is too much water in their waste sewerage, water which builds up pressure that can only be released by pumping it into our rivers or the sea. As a result, 75 per cent of the world is covered by water that should not be drunk.