Scottish Water has apologised for problems which brought dirty water to thousands of homes across Fife in recent days.
The apology comes as the company issues a plea for the public to do more to conserve water usage during hot weather.
A surge in demand saw water usage increase by 22% during the weekend which led to reduced water pressure and discoloured water for many households in Glenrothes, Kirkcaldy, Lochgelly, Methil, St Andrews and Newport-on-Tay as additional flows lifted the natural sediment from the mains.
Emergency water deliveries as Fife homes suffer dirty brown water supplies for third day
With the problems continuing for several days Scottish Water was forced into making emergency bottled water deliveries to scores of the most vulnerable across the Kingdom to keep them supplied.
Kes Juskowiak, national water operations manager, said the problems with discoloration had now reduced but that they still needed the public’s support in reducing unnecessary demand.
He said: “As a resident of Fife, I was also personally affected and I apologise for any issues customers experienced over the course of the weekend.
“The water remained safe to use for drinking, washing and cooking, however customers are being asked not to run their taps to try and resolve any discolouration.”
Mr Juskowiak added that as people are spending more time in their gardens it was important they considered the amount of water being use on things like washing their cars, watering gardens and for recreation.
The spike in demand experienced by Scottish Water during the weekend was double that seen on previous increases this year with an additional 450 million litres of water used by its customers.
“From watering the garden with sprinklers and hoses, to filling up paddling pools, sometimes requiring thousands of litres to use, we are keen to not place further demand on the public water system at this time,” said Mr Juskowiak.
“There’s been a lack of any significant rainfall in many parts of the country over recent weeks, and coupled with the weekend’s high temperatures and the fact that more people are staying at home, we saw an increase in usage that came close to the summer of 2018 when we saw record temperatures.
“We’ve been putting the equivalent of 60 Olympic-sized pools-worth of water into the network to ensure customers are kept in supply.
“I would ask customers to carefully think about the water they use in and around the home, especially when it’s warm and dry, and to be more water efficient.”
The company has now issued advice on how to reduce water consumption which include using watering cans rather than hose pipes to water gardens, part filling paddling pools and showering for a shorter time each day.