Sewage plant flies plague village

Residents report flies dropping on their food and into their baths

A village near Barnsley has been plagued by thousands of flies because of maintenance work at a sewage works.

People in Lundwood say that for the last four weeks they have had to kill swarms of insects in their houses and then sweep up the piles of dead flies.

Resident Barry Barker said: "There's been absolutely thousands upon thousands of them. I'm fed up with it."

Yorkshire Water said work at the water treatment plant "could have allowed more flies than usual to escape".

A company spokesman said they were spraying the worst-affected areas with insecticide and fly numbers should drop "dramatically" as a result.

Increased risk

"Essential maintenance work has been taking place at Lundwood as part of the multi-million pound upgrade of the water treatment works," said a Yorkshire Water statement.

"Yorkshire Water was aware some elements of the scheme could increase the risk of flies escaping across a wider area so the zones thought to present the most significant threat have been dosed daily.

"However, more recent work also coincided with a prolonged spell of warm sunny weather, which always has a significant impact on the fly population.

"Improvement work in an area of the treatment plant, which could have allowed more flies than usual to escape, was completed at the end of last week."

He said the number of flies should drop as a result of the control methods used on site and lower temperatures over the past couple of days.

"Nevertheless, we appreciate flies can be a nuisance and would appreciate calls from customers should they continue to experience significant problems," he added.