Villagers in Benenden, Kent, have spelled out the words 'help us' using thousands of plastic bottles after suffering a week without running water. The protest, organized by local pub landlady Lucy Barron-Reid, aimed to draw attention to the environmental impact of the crisis and the frustration of residents who have faced repeated outages.
Protest on the cricket square
At 5pm on Monday, 70 to 80 people gathered on the cricket square in Benenden with empty two-litre plastic bottles to form the plea. Barron-Reid, who runs The Bull pub, estimated that each participant brought around three bin liners full of plastic, with roughly 25 bottles per bag, totaling approximately 6,000 bottles. The demonstration came after some 1,800 properties across Tunbridge Wells, Kent, experienced no or low water pressure since last Thursday. As of Thursday, about 400 households remained affected.
Barron-Reid, 56, said: 'We wanted to show the environmental impact of not having mains water, the amount of plastic that was collected in less than one week, and add some community spirit. Everyone is exhausted; let's not forget, we've just had three or four heatwaves in a row, and two of those heatwaves we've not had any water.'
Frustration with South East Water
The pub landlady, who has run The Bull for 22 years, said the water supply was consistent until four years ago, but since then there have been 'sporadic outages'. She described this year as 'really bad', with the latest outage now in its eighth day, matching the longest previous outage. Residents also went without water for five days over Christmas.
Barron-Reid added: 'The whole thing was to say come on South East Water, this has got to stop but you've also got to start listening to us. You can't just keep sending different reasons daily as to why the water is off. They've got to come up with an answer; they can't keep sticking plasters on it.' She believes 'crucial questions' need answering, including where the plastic is coming from, who is profiting from it, and whether South East Water discusses recycling with Tunbridge Wells council.
Impact on residents and businesses
The publican has decided to remain open despite the difficulties, fearing a closure could have a financial impact on the business. She described running the pub without running water as 'incredibly difficult'. 'As an individual it's difficult, like it is for any other resident. Just having to think, right, we need to flush the loos, we need to shower, put the washing machine on, drink water, to just live normally. As a business owner, it's all of those things tenfold because we've got to still cater for customers,' she said.
Iden Green resident Peter Massey had no water for three days last week and criticized the 'normalisation' of outages. He said: 'The thing that upsets me is the drip feed from the government and the water companies is all about normalising this. They're talking about, should we do surge charging when there's a lack of water? This is just about normalising the idea that there will be a lack of water. We shouldn't be expecting to have less than 100% of taps with running water in this country in this day and age. We're not going to accept that we don't get water out of our taps.'
South East Water response
South East Water reported that up to 1,800 properties in the Benenden and Rolvenden areas may have been experiencing low pressure or no water as of Wednesday morning, with the number decreasing to about 400 by Thursday. Incident Manager Jenny Rhodes said: 'Overnight, water has been returning to customers in the Benenden area. We have been using tankers to support the network and storage levels at our tanks have improved significantly as a result but we will continue to monitor the situation very closely. We know how difficult it has been for our customers to be without water for so long. This is not the standard of service we want to provide and we apologise sincerely for the frustration and inconvenience it has caused. We are already looking at the actions we need to take to prevent this happening again.'
