WHAT was once a beautiful home, complete with a clean, flowing river, has turned into an unbearable place due to the awful sewage smell. Nelly Sharpley, a homeowner on Thames Drive, Westville, said she and her neighbours are not only faced with an unpleasant smell but raw sewage that has been affecting their health.
Situated very close to the river, with only the fence separating the river from her property and her neighbour’s, the community on Thames Drive said their reality has been of a severe sewage smell and raw sewage since 2019.
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“I reported the problem, and when they came to fix it, they left holes in my backyard and also removed my fence. They never properly built it up again. When they took it down, they said they would fence it again and put gabions along the river to protect the homes along the river. They never cleaned or restored what they damaged when they tried to do handiwork instead of professional civil-engineering-led work,” she said.
She said nothing has changed since then, but instead, there has been a persistent smell which is almost unbearable and has been worse since the 2022 April Floods.
“I asked them to clean up the river again after the second floods and to erect the gabions which they failed to put last time as they’d promised. Now, I was told that the river is on my property and therefore my problem. My question is, how then is the City using my land for its infrastructure and still leaving me exposed to the risk they created in the first place?
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“There haven’t been any repairs since 2019, and they really did nothing then, and the sewage was still leaking. The second storm came, and no work has been done since. The sewerage stations and pipes here were wiped out by the second floods. Today, it’s even worse and is left unattended,” she said.
Other neighbours attested to what Sharpley says and raised health concerns, saying they have been falling sick. “We have two children, and they are constantly sick. Initially, we thought it was normal flu, but upon speaking to other neighbours, we realised that we share the same symptoms, which are flu-like with breathing difficulties,” they said.
Furthermore, the community stated that they do not open their windows anymore, with some depending on air conditioners which adds to their existing problems.
“We have challenges with humidity inside the house, in the ceiling, because we haven’t been able to open our windows since 2019, and we fully depend on air conditioning. It is also not healthy for it to be used daily. The electricity expenses, unplanned medical expenses, and compromised living that we were subjected to…” they said.
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