South West Water waiting for 'recharge season'
BBCSouth West Water has said the region is waiting for its "recharge season" to refill its reservoirs.
The Environment Agency declared more than half of England as being in drought at the end of July and on 15 October, this was escalated to severe drought for parts of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, East Sussex, and West Sussex.
As of 19 October, Wimbleball in Somerset, which supplies more than 400,000 people including Exeter, was 13% full and in Cornwall, Stithians was at 19%.
The company's drought programme director Richard Stanbrook said there had been "a lot of focus" on the low reservoir levels.
Stanbrook said there had been a "long, hot period" and reservoir levels had "dropped low" as a result.
"We've been keeping a close eye on that, and we are assuring they stay at a level where we can continue to meet our demand for our customers."
He said the water company was planning daily and had been over the summer months to manage the extractions from reservoirs.
Regarding Wimbleball, he said: "We're waiting for the recharge season for when the rain comes and we've been pushing hard to make sure that lake stays at that good level until that rain comes."
He said high demand during the busy summer season needed to be managed "through more publicity, more customer communication and tourist communication to use water more wisely."
He also said the company had invested heavily in repairing leaks by increasing the number of crews in the region by 14 and repairing more than 440 leaks a week.
Due to the prolonged dry period causing the ground to move, he said there had been a "significant increase" in pipe bursts during July and August.
Heavy rain is forecast with Storm Austen from Thursday, which he said the company "welcomed".
'Across the country'
Stanbrook also said the situation reflected the national picture, and it was not just South West Water experiencing low reservoirs.
"If you looked at reservoirs across the country, they are low and they have suffered and all water companies are working very hard for that."
Asked whether water companies should be re-nationalised, he said having been in the industry for about 30 years, he had seen improvements including the drinking water quality.
"I don't comment on the ownership structure, but what we are doing is taking our customers' money and spending that as wisely as we can on improving our waste water treatment as well as our clean water networking treatment.
"In the next five years we've got a multi-billion-pound programme to continue to do that including significant mains replacement."
