Freshwater East Action Group against Public Sewer Installation

c/o Mr M Griffiths

Rosebay Willows

Jason Road

Freshwater East

Pembroke SA71 5LE

19^th March 2012

The Petitions Committee

National Assembly for Wales

Cardiff Bay

Cardiff

CF99 1NA

Your ref P-04-344

Dear Sir/Madam

Petition on Freshwater East Public Sewer

We refer to your recent e-mail to Mr and Mrs Thomas in which you asked for a reply to your letter to them of 6^th February. They have informed you that your letter of 6^th February was not received by them. Our group has now discussed the information attached to your e-mail and our reply is as follows.

The only action taken by the Minister, John Griffiths, to date has been to postpone his decision about taking enforcement action against Welsh Water. The postponement was made pending the outcome of further information from the Environment Agency.

Mr James Dowling (from the Water Policy Branch) has informed us that, at a meeting on 15^th February, the Environment Agency reported to the Water Policy section that a survey carried out by the EA in January did not reveal any significant problems attributable to the private drainage systems in Freshwater East. It was decided at the February meeting to repeat the EA’s survey in the summer when more of the properties in the village are likely to be occupied.

Angela Burns AM has recently informed us that she has been told that the second survey will be carried out in May/June this year.

While we welcome this development, we have not been given any information about the survey work and we will want to have an opportunity to review the reports prepared by the Environment Agency in due course.

We would therefore ask that that our petition should remain open until such time as the Minister makes a decision and we have had an opportunity to see the information supplied to him by the Environment Agency.

Yours sincerely

Members of Freshwater East Action Group

(cc Mrs Angela Burns AM and Mr J Dowling, Water Policy Branch))