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Walkers in Lucy Moore Park may have noticed a peculiar smell there recently.
A manhole, which appears to have lifted during the torrential rain last month, overflowed, spilling raw sewage onto the surrounding ground.
Resident John Staines says the smell was “very bad” and he was unimpressed with Watercare’s response.
“I went in personally to the council office in Baxter Street to alert them to the situation. When I returned to the manhole a week later, absolutely nothing had been done. What had come out of the drain was still there, albeit dried up. This is very disappointing to see in such a public place.”
Watercare northern networks operations manager Tim Scheirlinck says March 21 was far more intense than the average storm.
“Normally, bad weather might see about 20mm of rain over an hour, but between 8am and 9am on Monday, we saw up to 80mm,” Scheirlinck says.
“Because of the intensity of the rainfall, surface flooding near our manholes and at gully traps caused rain to inundate the wastewater network and triggered overflows all over the city.
“As such, a network alarm in our system was triggered at 8.20am on March 21, alerting us to a pump station overflow in Lucy Moore Park. This would have likely caused the lid of the manhole in question to pop off and overflow due to the volume of stormwater in the network.
“Our crews carried out an inspection but in this case, crews were swamped with call-outs and, unfortunately, this particular job slipped through the cracks for booking a clean-up.
“We sincerely apologise for the oversight and can confirm our staff have since attended and carried out a thorough clean up.”
