Leaky pipes waste enough water to fill 84 swimmping pools a day...

Enough water to fill 84 Olympic-sized swimming pools will have leaked out of pipes in Lincolnshire by the end of today, according to new figures.

Leakage statistics for Anglian Water, the county’s main provider, have been released by Ofwat, which monitors water companies across the UK.

Ofwat sets targets for each company to maintain leakage at a level which, it says, provides the best value for customers and the environment.

The target for Anglian Water for 2008/9 was 210 megalitres of water leaking away every day.

An Olympic-sized swimming pool holds 2.5 megalitres so that roughly equates to 84 swimming pools’ worth of water lost through leakages every day, with a grand total of 30,660 pools’ worth of water lost throughout the year.

Despite this extraordinary amount of water wasted, Anglian Water says it is one of the best water companies in the country for preventing leakage – when the amount leaking away is compared against the size of its pipe network.

Anglian Water media manager Sara Rowland said: “Anglian Water has the joint lowest leakage level, along with South West Water, at 5.6 cubic metres per kilometre of pipe per day.

“The target for us as expressed by Ofwat was 210 megalitres per day. This is in the context of supplying roughly 1.2 billion litres of water every day, under pressure, through a network of more than 37,000km of water mains.”

The Tanning Shop in St Benedict’s Square in Lincoln was severely affected by a leak in June which went unrepaired for more than two weeks before the pipe finally burst and flooded the whole area with water.

Staff say they are still repairing the damage almost five months later.

Sales assistant Stacey Vavasourspelt correctly said: “The water damage was so much, we had to have our floors repaired.

“We lost a day’s takings, because all the electrical equipment around the water made the shop unsafe.

“We had to turn off all the electrics, and even get a new computer, as the other one was damaged by the leak.

“If Anglian Water is prepared to lose that amount of water it should lower customers’ water bills.”