South East Water is responding to a news release issued by the Environment Agency on Friday entitled ‘Some Water Plans Need More Work, Says Agency’.

In the release, the Environment Agency's director of water management, Dr Geoff Mance says that ‘South East Water predicts that in a drier-than-average year, it will not be able to meet customer demand in these areas [Kent and Sussex], but its plan contains no proposals on how it will deal with this problem’.

South East Water's resources plan was compiled using the Agency's prescribed methodology for calculating levels of resources. The data within this plan had been verified and accepted by the Agency and their auditors in March 1998. However, two months before the final plan was due to be submitted, the Agency advised the company that some of the data used was no longer acceptable.

This decision has led to the calculation of a deficit in water resources. South East Water believes this deficit exists on paper only and therefore did not put in proposals to deal with a deficit - a view supported by three respected independent studies (Arup, Halcrow, Institute of Hydrology).

The application of the methodology used to calculate the water resources has been the subject of ongoing discussions with the Agency and South East Water and the agency has already agreed to review it. This has not been taken into account in the report, to be published tomorrow.

Having agreed a number of actions following the submission of its original resources plan, South East Water is very surprised that the news release and the report ‘it refers to, do not reflect the current situation with regard to: the company's discussions with the EA; the calculation of a theoretical deficit and the recent proposals submitted by the company.

South East Water is concerned that the contents and tone of Agency's news release will cause undue concern and alarm to its customers, particularly in Eastbourne – one of the largest towns in its supply area.

Statistically, a drier-than-average year is calculated to occur one in every hundred years.

For further information, please contact the South East Water press office on 01323 413254 or 0411 893 642.