Villagers flooded with raw sewage want solution

Residents of a Cornish village flooded with raw sewage during the recent storms have called for the drain system to be replaced.

Stithians has been flooded with sewage and storm overflow since Storm Ingrid on Friday, members of the community said.

Luke Dunning lives in the village and said "no matter how many times the system gets done, the sewage comes back up", while parish councillor Phil Blease said a "radical redesign and engineering solution" was needed.

South West Water said Stithians' system had been "overwhelmed" and it was "urgently working on a long-term solution".

Lou Frame, who works at Stithians School, said the village had flooded "for years and years".

"The sewage system is antiquated and needs replacing, but South West Water puts a sticky plaster on it every time something happens."

She said pupils had spent a week laying wood chip and smartening up the Wild Tribe play area in the school fields, which had been "completely wrecked" by the sewage flooding.

"Children are standing in raw sewage every morning waiting for the bus, it's disgusting," she added.

Parish councillor Blease also said that previously, "South West Water has come up with sticking plaster solutions".

"Flood water is mixing with raw sewage and making it very unpleasant," he added.

Karen Smith has been part of the clean-up team of residents and said the community had been "pulling together".

She said they had used sandbags, bailing and pumps to try and save homes from becoming flooded but, despite this, water and sewage had breached at least three properties.

She said it was also unhygienic because there was no outflow, so they could not wash their hands after dealing with the flooding.

"We need a bigger infrastructure here, it's not adequate," she added.

South West Water said it was "using tankers to remove flows where possible, providing sandbags to divert flows away from properties and cleaning up debris as quickly as possible".

The firm said: "We are urgently working on a long-term solution here, which includes removing rainfall from our sewer network and investigating potential illegal connections into the sewers, as well as increasing the size of local sewers to provide additional storage."

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