Thames Water has located and repaired an underground leak that was losing three million litres of water each day in Holborn, London.
The leak in the 16-inch cast iron pipe is one of the largest to be found as part of Thames efforts to locate leaks in its main network using ground microphones and correlators.
The company said it had repaired 39,000 leaks in the past year – an increase of 30 per cent in nine years.
Tim McMahon, head of water networks at the company, said: “This is one of the biggest underground leaks we’ve ever found, and was great work by the teams to repair it. Three million litres a day is a significant amount, so we’re delighted to have found it and plugged it.”
He said leakage is a top priority for the company and that dividend payments to its shareholders had been suspended to prioritise investment, with more than £1 million being spent every day on tackling leakage.
The company is working to reduce leakage by 15 per cent by 2025 – a challenge Ofwat set the sector. Thames was named in July as one of two water companies to miss its leakage targets for 2018/19.
“We have dozens of teams working around the clock to find and fix leaky pipes right across our region, and this is an excellent example of the work they are doing,” McMahon said.
The company said it fixes an average of 1,400 pipes every week and has pledged to reduce leakage by 15 per cent by 2025 to 509 million litres a day.
In March this year the company signed contracts worth a combined £200 million with suppliers to find and fix “more leaks than ever before” across London and the Thames Valley.