Sewerage delays hit fan - again

by Jessica Naidos

April 23, 2008

A SPEARWOOD activist continues to be miffed over what she sees as broken promises by water resources minister, John Kobelke, over when her working class southern suburb will finally be sewered.

Ross Court resident, Mary Jenkins, received a letter from the minister in February saying work on connecting her unsewered home to deep water sewerage would start in April 2008.

However, last week the Water Corporation emailed her saying she’d have to put up with her ageing septic tank six months longer – with work now not starting until October.

“The minister fobbed us off again,” ms Jenkins railed. “He keeps fobbing us off.”

“This has gone on and on and on, and everyone now has holes in their gardens from digging out their own septic tanks when they collapse.”

Many Spearwoodians still await sewerage, and several houses’ septic tanks are literally crumbling beneath their owners’ feet.

“There are only so many houses waiting to be done, why don’t they just finish it?” Ms Jenkins said. “What they do is they go to the new areas, for the developers.”

“Spearwood is a difficult area to do due to the limestone and it might just be in the ‘too hard’ basket, but they’re going to do it one day so why don’t they just start already?”

On top of concerns about when they’ll actually get sewerage, several residents have expressed concerns to Ms Jenkins about how much it will cost them to connect the new sewerage to their homes. On behalf of those residents, Ms Jenkins presented the concern to the Water Corporation.

She recently received a response saying the number low income earners could call for help in funding a connection was 13 13 95.

eMU News sought Mr Kobelke’s side of the story, but his media relations officer failed to return our calls.