Yorkshire Water's £19 million investment praised by Lib Dem Euro MP

9.00.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Wed 27th May 2009

A multi-million pound investment by Yorkshire Water won a warm welcome today from MEP Diana Wallis and Lib Dem parliamentary candidate Howard Keal.

The duo were on site this morning at Hunmanby where groundwork is being done for a project starting this summer to lay a new pipeline to connect water supplies in the Filey/Scarborough area with Yorkshire Water's unique grid.

Diana Wallis, a Vice President of the European Parliament, said: "This is a major scheme with big benefits for a large number of people in the area and I'm very happy it's moving ahead quickly."

Howard Keal, parliamentary candidate for Malton and Thirsk, which covers Filey, said: "This is the best kind of pipe dream - it will improve the security and quality of water supplies to 75,000 customers in the area.

"It is excellent to see this level of investment being made by the company in tapping into the main Yorkshire grid to strengthen the supply network on which so many of us rely."

Howard Keal and Diana Wallis gave a toast to the project in Yorkshire Water's finest H20 during the visit and looked at preparation work for laying the new pipeline for which the first part of the trench has already been dug.

Yorkshire Water's stakeholder manager Louise King said: "Significant benefits will be provided for our customers by the scheme including improved water quality and preventing disruption to supplies."

Work on the pipeline is concentrated in the countryside and involves mainly going through fields. The first phase connects Irton, near Scarborough, with Haisthorpe, near Bridlington.

"We will also install a new pumping station at Haisthorpe and new pumps at the treatment works at Tophill Low in East Yorkshire," said Louise.

(Photo shows Louise King, Diana Wallis MEP, Howard Keal and pipeline project manager Mike Grierson toasting the Yorkshire Water pipeline project - in its finest H20 - at the works site)