Ellesmere residents' fury over town's 'disgusting' tap water
The quality of tap water in a town has come under fire from residents who have described it as "disgusting".
Residents in Ellesmere say "scummy" water often comes out of their taps and needs to be filtered before they can drink it.
They believe the water comes from a borehole and problems with its quality have been reported to Severn Trent.
Today, the utility firm said internal pipework not owned by Severn Trent had been the cause of some of the taste issues for customers.
Resident Lincoln McMullan said: "The water tastes disgusting. Why should we have to pay for our water when it tastes this bad?
"It doesn't smell – it just tastes awful. It tastes of metal. You have got to filter it out of the tap into a jug, then into a kettle and it still comes out scummy.
"You have to pay a fortune for filters. We also have to buy so many bottles of water.
"People in the market hall have also been complaining about it. I think it comes from a borehole by the golf club."
Ria Gaffney, spokesman for Severn Trent, said: "We sample the water regularly in Ellesmere and, where we've had customers report any issues, we've thoroughly investigated the supply.
"All of the samples we've taken from the area have returned satisfactory, meaning we haven't found any issues with the water and so there's no reason to believe there's anything wrong with the water supply.
"Under further investigation, we've found internal pipework has been the cause of some taste issues for some customers, something Severn Trent is not responsible for.
"We take water quality very seriously and ensuring our customers receive top quality drinking water is very important to us, so we'd encourage anyone experiencing a problem with their water supply to contact us."
Residents in Oswestry have also previously complained about the taste of their tap water.
Complaints over water in and around the town began in 2003 when a water company switched its water supply from the old Llanforda reservoir, which collected water from the Berwyn Mountains, to an underground water pipe coming from the Shelton waterworks in Shrewsbury.
Customers said that not only was the new supply so hard it would fur up electrical appliances, it also tasted of chlorine.
