OREANDA-NEWS. AS Tallinna Vesi is pleased to report that in the 3rd quarter of 2013 we have achieved a very high and stable quality level and will continue to work on maintaining the high performance levels and improvements on all indicators. The third quarter performance clearly demonstrates the positive impact for customers from the preventive actions we have taken to reduce the number of blockages and continuously low level of leakages.

We are dedicated on improving our customer service and raising the awareness of the local community about environmental issues and activities. As a recognition to the mind-set we put into our daily work, we have been nominated as a Responsible Company, in Tallinn Enterpreneurship Awards 2013.

Tallinn's drinking water is of a very high quality and people are safe to drink tap water. The quality of drinking water is subject to strict legal requirements and is monitored in line with the drinking water sampling programmes approved by the Health Board. During nine months of 2013, 2215 samples were taken from the consumers' taps, of which 99,64 % were compliant with all quality requirements, only eight were non-compliant. We continue to outperform the levels of service agreed in the Services Agreement concluded with the City of Tallinn and is comparable to the water quality in Western-Europe. We also provide drinking water to the citizens of Maardu and in the third quarter drinking water quality was 100% compliant with EU requirements.

Reliable service

It is important for the people to have the service available for 24h. Thus, we focus on improving the security of supply. In 3rd quarter of 2013, the reliability of the service was negatively influenced by the construction works in the centre of Tallinn and Nomme area. The number of customer contacts regarding water quality and pressure increased compared to the same period on 2012 due to the construction works, which also increased the number of unplanned interruptions and increase in the number of failures of our own promises. Our promises is scheme unique to AS Tallinna Vesi, where we automatically compensate customers if we fail one of our own internal standards. Despite that, we were able to reduce the average duration of water interruption per customer by 7% compared to the same period of 2012.

For the customers

We deem it important to focus on precautionary activities which enable us to react quickly and prevent more serious problems from occurring. Our aim is to notify our customers of when their problems will be resolved. In order to reduce inconvenience caused by interruptions to supply, in first half year of 2013, we notified customers of interruptions to water supply in advance in 98% of the cases.

Additionally, we are continuously dedicated on finding improved solutions in order to make customers' interaction with us as easy as possible. For example in the third quarter we launched new web based application forms which makes the process easier and faster.

Continuous work for a cleaner environment

Year-on-year decrease of the level of leakages has been achieved by consistent efforts to improve the quality of our network management. Compared to the situation ten years ago we are saving around 13 000 m3 per day of good quality drinking water. Despite the small changes increase in the the level of the leakages in 2013, our full year performance is well below historic norms and continues on a downward trend.

We are persistently working on reducing the risks of potential flooding and pollution. By the end of third quarter 2013, 148 km of sewage networks was cleaned. As a result of preventive actions the number of sewerage blockages has reduced by 7% compared to the same period of 2012.