Sewage infrastructure is unfit for purpose. There are regular and increasing failures of pumps and infrastructure leading to raw sewage flowing onto highways and footpaths around Hemingford primary school many times per year. There is a significant environmental and health impact from raw sewage overflow entering Marsh lane lakes and the River Ouse. Parents, children and pets are unbeknownst regularly walking through untreated sewage and have not been warned of the health risks. Raw sewage is exiting manholes and regularly and repeatedly flooding multiple properties and gardens. Residents unable to use toilets, showers and baths, sometimes for weeks on end. As this petition goes live there are numerous residents having to enter their property by wading through sewage over one foot deep! Some have had no, or severely restricted, toilet use since before Xmas. We each pay thousands of pounds for a service that is not supplied.

WHY? - Because the old infrastructure is totally overwhelmed. There has been insufficient investment in infrastructure to cope with new builds, most recently the addition of the Yes estate to the already overwhelmed infrastructure. This has lead to problems surfacing elsewhere in the village, with residents in Greenfields being told by AW to stop using their toilets on Jan 31st. Existing pumps are running at maximum capacity most of the year - any breakdown leads to a sewage backup, even in dry weather. In wet weather the old and leaky fiber pipe system allows entry of too much freshwater that overwhelms the system within hours.

What are AW doing about it? Well, after a 3 hour wait on their "emergency" help line they can arrange to send a man in a van round (in 48 hours) to tell you "it is like this everywhere", "the weather is to blame", "residents are to blame" (for flushing non-flushables), "we just don't have the tankers". All the while they continue to charge residents for their full sewage and water rates and pocket the additional revenue from the Yes estate without spending a penny upgrading the system to cope.

What are AW not doing? Steadfastly refusing to invest in new infrastructure despite repeated promises going back over 20 years. A brief glance at Anglianwater.co.uk is revealing. CEO Peter Simpson boasts "Group revenue of £1,419.9 million, an increase of £65.2 million (4.8 per cent) on 2019" and "profit before tax for the period is £43.6 million, up £81.5 million ". He then talks about Anglian water's "ability to deliver growth in what is the driest and one of the fastest-growing areas of the country." Driest ! – So why are the AW engineers that have visited Hemingford every week since Xmas telling residents that nothing can be done because it is too wet !  AW are no strangers to broken promises. The Environment Agency reports “...12 serious pollution incidents” and “ …4 successful prosecutions" in the last year. Peter Simpson prefers to pay the fines and keep a low profile to ensure dividend payout to shareholders rather than invest to supply his customers with the service they have paid for. Which is it Peter? Too dry so you must over-extract from chalk streams and the water table to supply customers, or too wet for you to be able to remove their sewage?

What is Needed? A commitment from Peter Simpson to install a new sewer main serving the whole village. It needs to be connected to new upgraded pumping stations at all locations, with increased flow rates and sufficient capacity to cover existing flows and anticipated expansion over the next 20 years. Critically, it must have capacity to deal with inevitable breakdowns and blockages without being overwhelmed.

In the interim, AW needs to invest now in a fleet of tanker crews to pump excess sewage from overwhelmed stations and flooded manholes to stop the untreated sewage continuing to flow into our properties, onto our roads and into our lakes and waterways. If he can at least get the emergency measures in place perhaps the Regatta events in the Hemingfords, St Ives and further downstream will not be threatened. Peter Simpson and Anglian water need to be pressured to divert their profits and dividend payments into critical infrastructure to provide the most basic essential services we have already paid for.

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION to make Anglian water commit to two actions right now:

1.       Provide immediate round-the-clock tanker service to remove excess sewage to stop contaminating properties and our waterways.

2.       Commit to a complete infrastructure upgrade for the entire village to ensure there is no repeat.