Worst water scare in region
The tap water crisis has affected more homes than any other water supply scare in the east of England in recent times.
Anglian Water, whose supply became contaminated by the cryptosporidium parasite, covers from Daventry to the east coast, north as far as Scunthorpe and south to Southend-on-Sea.
But the company said no area it supplied had faced cutbacks on drinking water which affected so many people, an estimated 258,000 in 108,0000 homes.
A spokesman for Anglian Water said: "This has never happened before in this region. Something similar happened in Norfolk last year but that affected 10,000 people at the most. It was nothing like the scale we are dealing with here."
The Norfolk outbreak happened in North Walsham last summer.
Water had to be boiled for weeks and Anglian Water wrote to affected households to offer a credit to their water account to cover the cost and inconvenience of boiling water. Business customers received 50.
The total compensation payment to customers in North Walsham is likely to amount to 170,000.
The biggest outbreak of cryptosporidium in Britain in recent years was in Anglesey in November 2005.
About 70,000 homes whose water was supplied from a Snowdonia reservoir were told to boil their drinking water for two months after the outbreak.
However, the bug affected more than 230 Welsh residents, whereas there had been no confirmed cases of cryptosporidiosis here as of yesterday evening.
Since the outbreak, the water company has installed new ultra-violet treatment to kill the bug.
Anglian Water stressed no cases of cryptosporidiosis had been found in Northamptonshire.
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Thursday 09 February 2012
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