When a water pipe springs a leak in the Massachusetts township of Hingham, all it takes is a text message to put things right.

A text message spanning 5,000 miles, that is, to a crack team of engineers working at Yorkshire Water's Bradford headquarters.

The experts - who have helped cut the number of leaking pipes in Yorkshire for eight successive years - are now exporting their expertise across the Atlantic.

And the team are using the latest satellite and mobile-phone technology to monitor the situation.

Yorkshire Water's sister firm Aquarion has taken responsibility for the water supply to 11,000 homes in the township which lies south of Boston.

But, unlike here, the system is not split into 'leakage reduction zones', making it tough to estimate leakage levels.

Now a number of leakage and pressure monitors have been fitted on the Hingham mains system.

They log the amount of water passing through and, by calculating how much the average household uses, the engineers can tell if more water is being used than normal, indicating a leak.

The information is passed to Yorkshire Water's leakage development manager Andrew Bardsley in Bradford via a mobile phone and satellite system.

On arriving at work at 8.30am, Mr Bardsley and his team interpret the data - sent as a text message - and send their findings to their American counterparts in time for their morning shift.

Mr Bardsley said: "We are just eight weeks into this experiment and all is going to plan.

"The loggers are collecting the data, the phones are sending the data and we are receiving it at this end.

"If the trial continues to be a success, I can see no reason why this can't be expanded to Aquarion's other water supply areas in North-Eastern United States.

"As for the leakage zones, they are a relatively new concept for the Americans. Even though these have been widely used in the UK for a long time now, the Hingham experiment is one of the first in the States."