Residents of Sandown Extension 24 are up in arms about continuous burst pipes that have plagued the area for the past four years.
Ward 103 councillor, Vincent Earp said the area had been experiencing continuous weekly water outages. “Most of the time it has been in David or Gerrard streets,” he said.
However, Earp said there have been a number of bursts in neighbouring streets. “Whenever there is a burst, the residents are without water. Joburg Water has acknowledged the problem and said they were considering a pipe replacement project for Sandown ext 24.
“Due to the continuous bursts in David and Gerrard, they replaced the pipes in the two streets. However, all the water pipes in the area are old. A planned water replacement project is presently under investigation.”
Robyn Meltz has been a resident of the area for almost 20 years and voiced her concern about the problem. “It is an ongoing issue, as one section is fixed, another adjacent section breaks,” she said.
Meltz added that in addition to the constant burst water pipes, sewerage leaks also occur and sewage runs down the streets. “The last major one [sewerage leak] occurred from Middle Road all the way down Edward Rubenstein Drive in December 2016 for two weeks. Although there was raw sewage pouring onto these streets, this was not attended to and on Boxing Day, the sluice was opened and the mess was terrible.”
She said there had been a lot of construction and high-density housing going up in the area and the infrastructure was unable to cope. “We were promised a total upgrade of water pipes in the last quarter of 2017 and nothing happened.”
Another resident Wayne Dannheisser has lived in the area for about seven years and said David, Gerard and Adrienne streets were mainly affected. He added that it usually took about 12 to 18 hours to fix a burst pipe. “Often the repair is affected and the same pipe either bursts again or it bursts very close to the initial burst.”
Dannheiser was most concerned with the extreme waste of water as it was left flowing down the street for hours on end. He said the pavements were in a bad state as they have been dug up so often, including the roads which were never repaired. “Our suburb looks like a shambled mess.”
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