WATER supplies to areas of the county will be boosted by up to 10 million litres a day, because of new schemes brought forward by Southern Water.

The schemes have meant refurbishment of underground water sources at three locations in the Medway Towns.

The work has been fast tracked, because of drought conditions last winter.

New pumps and monitoring equipment have been installed at Southern Water’s Capstone Road plant at Chatham. This will make available an extra three million litres per day.

Work is underway at Cuxton, where facilities have been out of use following the discovery of contamination at a nearby building site.

The building work is now complete and the area cleaned. Southern Water is refurbishing the installation and installing new monitoring equipment. Once it is complete, a further five million litres a day will be available.

The third project is at Kettle Hill, near Faversham, where new pumps have been installed and work carried out to deal with ground problems. Up to two million litres a day here can be piped to Medway and the Isle of Sheppey.

Nigel Smetham, water quality manager for Southern Water, said: "Work on all three sources was due to take place before 2010. But, because of current water resource issues, we started the projects early."