Forums Forums Wirral Information Ask - Wiki Wirral Origin of Wirral's tap water?

My daughter has just moved from Greasby to West Kirby and says the tapwater tastes better there. Does anyone know if all Wirral's water comes from the same source, or if different areas have different supplies? I've never really thought about it before, but now I'm curious. Couldn't find anything useful on the United Utilities website. It would be interesting to know.

As I understood, Liverpool water comes from a reservoir in Wales, and Wirral does too but not sure if it's the same reservoir.

Probably more chemicals added to different areas.

There is a Spring Hill borehole in Balls Road.oxton Road Birkenhead Brewery also pumped their water.I would think there are others which could account for the difference. Wirral sits on permeable rock and has a large aquifer beneath it.Information from Peel Holdings land survey (Wirral Waters) and fracking surveys give an insight into local water extraction and potential for contamination?? or not.

Birkenhead's main water supply used to come from the Alwen Reservoir in North Wales, which was built to supply the town. I don't know if the water still comes from there. See ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alwen_Reservoir

Much of Wirral's water comes now from the River Dee from an abstraction plant in Chester.

There are many boreholes in Wirral a number of them used for water supply before the abstraction plant was completed.. They can be seen on a map here:

http://mapapps.bgs.ac.uk/geologyofbritain/home.html?

Many of them have details of depth, diameter, rate of abstraction of water etc. Of particular interest to me was a borehole at Bebington station, drilled in 1931. It is located in the heavily overgrown patch of land on the ALDI side of the embankment and was used to supply locomotives with water. There is a small building (now invisible under layers of bramble, ivy, nettles etc) above the well which is 27" in diameter and was drilled down to 300 feet.

It must have been quite heavily used. In 1949 51 million gallons were abstracted. Thirsty beasts, steam engines!

I was told all the Wirral boreholes no longer contribute to our water supply.

Most (if not all) comes from the Huntington extraction point on the River Dee and from there goes to Sutton Hall. There may still be some comes from the Heronbridge and Deeside extraction points but it would be a bit pointless as Huntington supplies huge capacity of 400 megalitres a day and has a capability of more, it is rated at 250,000 megalitres a year which is far more than the other two put together.

Lyn Celyn near Bala

Construction of the reservoir involved flooding the village of Capel Celyn and adjacent farmland, a deeply controversial move. Much of the opposition was brought about because the village was a stronghold of Welsh culture and the Welsh language, whilst the reservoir was being built to supply Liverpool and parts of the Wirral peninsula with water, rather than Wales.

Thanks to all for your answers. There are a lot of well-informed people on here!

2013

That makes interesting reading, thanks - good old Bunter sandstone!

It turns out that my memory of the boreholes being closed was totally wrong. A conversation I had in 2009 said ...

Water for Wirral comes in now either from:
Sutton Hall Water Treatment Works, fed from the Dee at points near Handbridge and Heron Bridge in Chester.

Ellesmere Port is split between Sutton Hall and a bulk supply point at Hapsford which combines water from Hurleston Treatment Works in Chester and Simmonds Hill Reservoir and Borehole at the back of Frodsham.

Prenton is supplied partially from Crosshill Reservoir (water from Sutton Hall) or from Prenton Reservoir which gets it's water from Prenton Borehole (Prenton Dell Road) and Sutton Hall via Clatterbridge roundabout.

West Kirby gets water from both Newton and Grange boreholes as well as supplies from Crosshill and Heswall Reservoirs.

So we still have usable boreholes - that's good. At least we shouldn't be hit by water restrictions in summer, as it looks like the south east of England might be. Wonder if the idea of a 'water grid' to shift water around the country will ever become feasible? Probably just as feasible as HS2, I reckon...

The south east i.e. Kent have there own boreholes. They closed them all of in the late 1970's . So they shouldn't need any of our water.
I think that idea will fall apart, it was probably another idea for unification of all water companies(eventually) .Only need to see how many shares of our utilities are owned by foreign Governments. I believe the French got a huge percentage of NW Water when the water authorities were floated on the stock market a number of years ago. I always did wonder what the French wanted with our water companies.

SO far as HS2 goes, well that's different. I didn't think it was a good ide to begin with , now I'm not so sure. I do think it's a way of moving people out of London and bringing the 'bosses' to manage the companies they will re-locate. However, if it contributes to the regeneration of the area, then it must be good.
With the promised Peel Ports, things can't stay the same as they are now. Transport infrastructure and logistics has to be of main concern.

It tells which companies were sold off here. Pretty incredible !

Who owns Britain. Published in May 2010

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/b...aunches-first-uk-stock-take-1974079.html

Looks like Australia have a stake in our water !