A blocked drain is never fun, but an overflowing river of sewage is a nightmare.
Residents of Greenhills have been living with the constant smell of sewage for more than a week now. Last week Ria Ras noticed that the manhole in front of her property was pushing out sewage.
“It must have started on Sunday evening because a stream of sewage already was running all the way down to the Tweedeboats Dam.
“The water from this fishing spot many residents use runs underground to the next river in the chain to Hartebeespoort Dam, then through the Kruger National Park. The impact of the raw sewage flowing directly into a water supply line for over a week is hard to calculate.
“Fish and all other living organisms in the water are very susceptible to pollution and introducing foreign matter such as faeces and toilet cleaning agents could have an irreversible effect on the dam – not to mention the quality of the underground water.
“We phoned and reported the matter on Monday morning. We phoned a number of times again on Tuesday and Wednesday. A very polite woman told us every time that she ‘will give it through’, but no one even came to look at the problem,” Ras explained.
On Thursday after struggling most of the day to get through to the municipality’s emergency number on 011 411 0000 Ras was told that a broken pump in the line was causing the sewage backup and they don’t know when it would be fixed.
“My children can’t play outside; it is not safe for them. The curtains and furniture inside the house already reek of sewage. We are fed up. Why is there simply no sense of urgency with the municipality with issues like these? Is the municipality waiting for all the fish to go belly-up before they intervene?”
Lucky Chiya, spokesperson for the Executive Mayor was contacted about the matter, but he has been on leave.
The herald will update its readers as soon as feedback has been received.
