Sanitation concerns grow in UK flood-stricken areas

The lack of clean water in flood-stricken areas raised growing concerns today about sanitation and health.

More than 340,000 people in Gloucestershire have been told they will not have access to water in their homes for up to two weeks and are relying on bowsers and bottled water.

An urgent appeal was launched for portable toilets as fears about sewage treatment and contamination grew.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown will visit some of the affected areas this afternoon, his spokesman said.

The water crisis in Gloucestershire was sparked by the closure of the Mythe water treatment works, near Tewkesbury, which became submerged by water over the weekend.

It provides 120 million litres of clean drinking water per day.

The emergency services started pumping water from the site yesterday and continued through the night, but engineers have yet to assess the scale of the damage.

Severn Trent Water, which owns the works, said electricity had been restored to part of the plant but warned it would be several days before repairs could be carried out.

The company has set up 926 bowsers around Tewkesbury, Gloucester and Cheltenham which are being refilled five times a day.

The Army is helping distribute four million litres of bottled water across the area.

The Red Cross took delivery of 24 crates of bottled water – each containing 1,000 litres – at its depot in Quedgeley, Gloucestershire, this morning.

Gloucestershire County Council said it urgently needed more portable toilets for emergency workers and vulnerable people trapped in care and residential homes.

Six days after the deluge of rain fell across central and southern England, the Environment Agency(EA) said six severe flood warnings and 20 flood warnings were still in place.

A teenager who has not been seen since the height of the floods is still missing.

Mitchell Taylor, aged 19, from Tewkesbury, disappeared after leaving a bar in the deluged town in the early hours of Saturday.

A police spokesman said: “We have no news on him today and he is still registered as a missing person.”

In Oxford, more than 250 flooded homes were evacuated as tributaries feeding the Thames spilled over on to the river’s already waterlogged flood plain.