Scottish Water has confirmed it will return to normal operations after supporting those affected by stormy weather over the past few days.
Teams have been working day and night with a fleet of 17 road tankers to restore water supplies to customers.
Storm Malik and Storm Corrie caused disruption to a number of water networks, with areas in the rural north-east and Tayside the most significantly impacted.
At the peak of its response, Scottish Water teams were using 70 generators to power sites that provide drinking water to more than a million customers.
Kes Juskowiak, water operations general manager, said: “Our teams across Scotland have been working hard since the end of last week to prepare for and then respond quickly to the impacts of these two successive extreme weather events.
“We know how vital water is for our customers – even more so when some are faced with significant disruption to power supplies, the road network and telecommunications at the same time.
“Our primary goal was to maintain supplies wherever possible by preparing well and responding quickly as soon as it was safe to do so.”
Following the storms, Scottish Water teams distributed 40 pallets of bottled water – equivalent to 38,400 litres – and made doorstep deliveries to 380 homes.
‘Very difficult circumstances’
Scottish Water has been working alongside Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) since the storms hit.
Engineers are continuing work to restore power to the “small pockets” across the north and north-east still without power.
In its latest update, SSEN said that around 9,500 customers were still dealing with power outages.
The two companies have been liaising over the restoration of mains power at a small number of rural pumping stations.
Meanwhile, local teams have been responding to service issues in their area as they are reported.
Mr Juskowiak continued: “For a small number of rural communities in the north-east and Tayside, we regret that we were unable to prevent a period of disruption and our focus was then on restoring service as quickly as possible, while offering support to the affected customers.
“We are hugely grateful to our emergency response partners for their assistance in all our work, but even more so to customers for their patience and support in very difficult circumstances.
“We will continue to monitor affected water networks over the coming days until they have fully recovered – and until mains power is restored to the small number of sites which continue to rely on generators.”
Anyone who is still waiting for their normal water supply to return is asked to call Scottish Water on 0800 077 8778.
