NORTH West Water is making a big splash with Blackpool visitors about its sea water improvements.

The company is sending out 70,000 leaflets to Blackpool hotels and tourism offices promoting its £200m investment in cleaning up the coast's bathing water in the past five years.

The publicity drive, in partnership with the resort's hotel associations, aims to combat the image of pollution dating from before 1994 when untreated sewage was discharged directly into the sea.

But Blackpool South MP Gordon Marsden - who is president of the British Resorts Association - was still not happy.

"There have been some improvements but it's a bit premature to be blowing the trumpet too much," he said.

"We still don't have any beaches that reach EC blue flag standards and there are still some problems and concerns about the bathing water."

New Fleetwood sewage treatment works, opened in 1994, was expected to solve the problem, but bacteria levels remained too high and NWW found that the coast's high rainfall meant untreated sewage still flowed out when existing storage tanks reached full capacity.

Vast new storage tanks are now nearing completion near Bloomfield Road and the leaflets have illustrations showing these and two similar ones at Fleetwood stacked together, their combined height almost matching Blackpool Tower.

Blackpool Hotel and Guest House Association secretary Josie Hammond said: "We are pleased NWW is forging valuable partnerships with us and other local organisations.

"We can work together to provide a quality tourist experience and encourage visitors to the resort."

However, seafront hoteliers were not pleased last Friday when NWW announced improvement work at its Manchester Square pumping station would mean their guests losing a sea view for 18 months.

Mr Marsden said: "The hoteliers were, perfectly understandably, ill-tempered about it, when they have advertised a sea view and all their visitors will see is a hoarding.

"They also wanted to know why it couldn't start at the end of October instead of September, which means it puts the kibosh on two lights seasons."

NWW pays compensation to businesses who can prove they have lost trade through any of its work.

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