Brixham parasite outbreak ends after almost two months

All water across Brixham is now safe to drink, say South West Water, almost two months after a boil water notice was issued over a parasite outbreak. 

The parasite, known as cryptosporidium, was detected on May 15 after dozens of residents reported sickness and diarrhoea. 

Over 100 were confirmed to have the parasite infection, with many more reporting long and severe symptoms. 

After traces of the parasite were detected, 16,000 properties were told not to drink their water. The outbreak had a deep impact not just on residential areas, but on the tourism trade in Brixham and across Devon more widely. 

Since the cryptosporidium crisis began, South West Water has been working to progressively lift the boil notice for households. 

Now the remaining 674 properties in Higher Brixham, Southdown, Upton Manor and St Mary's have been cleared. South West Water says this notice follows "weeks of intensive interventions and enhanced sampling and monitoring."

SWW stated that the decision to completely lift the notice was made in accordance with the principles agreed upon with public health partners.

They said that the source of the contamination, which was a damaged air valve casing on private property, had been identified, removed, and replaced. Since then, the water supply has been “flushed” and new filters and pipework have been installed. 

Throughout the outbreak, the company says they also gave more than half a million bottles of water away, 390,000 of which were delivered to people’s homes. 

Susan Davy, Chief Executive Officer of South West Water, said that she was "acutely aware" of the disruption the outbreak had caused and wanted to "reiterate how sorry we are and want to apologise to those of you directly impacted."

She continued: "Incidents such as this are thankfully very rare but are incredibly complex to resolve. We very quickly identified the source of the contamination – a damaged air valve installation on private land – which we then removed and replaced. Over the past eight weeks, over 1000 South West Water network technicians, engineers, water quality scientists and contractors including Suez, Kier, Network Plus and Galliford Try have worked on rotation 24 hours a day. Their work has included the cleaning and testing of more than 30,000 kilometres of pipework, cleaning and flushing the network almost 30 times, ‘ice pigging’ and the installation of crypto filters and ultra-violet machines. We have laid more than 1.2 kilometres of new pipework and completely cleaned Hillhead and Boohay reservoirs.

"I understand how disruptive the past eight weeks have been – our customers, businesses and visitors have been incredibly patient while we have worked hard to restore full supply as quickly and as safely as possible.

"The recent events have been challenging for everyone in our community - however, our promise to provide safe, clean, and high-quality drinking water never wavers.

"We are sorry for the disruption that has been caused and we will do all we can to earn back the trust of our customers, businesses and visitors to the area."