10:03am Saturday 10th June 2006
By Dominic Yeatman
A KEEN gardener who has been urged by Thames Water to conserve water is getting steamed up by its failure to fix a leak in Woodford Green after seven months.
John Pegrum, of Kensington Drive, was walking his dog past the Chigwell Road recycling depot in November last year when he first noticed a spring emerging from a grassy verge just outside the entrance.
He says that in the months since he has phoned Thames Water six times to report the leak.
He said: "I called the number they give on the bill but you just get put through to a call centre and they just talk about the pipes being very old.
"It's been cascading down the drain since before Christmas and now they've sent me a letter saying Can you conserve water? I'm fed up with phoning them and getting nowhere."
A spokesman for Thames Water said that the first they had heard of the leak was on May 15. He added: "We went out there on the same day but we couldn't find any evidence of water coming out. We went back yesterday and found there was a water leak in a section of pipe that is the responsibility of the recycling centre.
"It's their responsibility but because this is a time of drought, and it's particularly important that we all do our bit to save water, we're going out next week to try and fix it."
Thames Water visited the site on Tuesday to fix the leak.
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