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Residents of a shared driveway in Warkworth are calling for action after years of delays in fixing recurrent leaks in the mains water pipe supplying their homes.
Ray and Gail Eder and Rob and Heather Barnes live on a drive shared by four houses off Victoria Street. Four years ago, the mains pipe supplying them all started springing regular leaks, sending substantial amounts of water into neighbours’ gardens and soaking the soil.
They said as soon as Watercare sent contractors to fix a leak, another one would appear somewhere else in the pipe, and the process would start again.
“Watercare have turned up several times and have dug holes and filled them up again. This has been going on for years,” Heather said. “The issue is that the water pipes are old and cracked, and actually need to be replaced with a new line.”
Watercare contractors appeared again in February, but instead of permanently replacing the line, laid a temporary overland pipe with supply pipes to each house across the shared driveway, and covered those with asphalt.
When these started cracking with all the traffic movements, the residents tried to contact Watercare to find out when a more permanent solution might happen, but were only told that the asphalt over the pipes would be replaced – though not all at once.
“A team came and resealed one of the asphalt-covered pipes and we haven’t seen them since. Nor can we raise them by phone or email. It’s like dropping pennies down a well and waiting for a splash,” Ray said.
They added that the judder bar pipes were a health and safety hazard, with an elderly neighbour tripping over one in the dark recently.
Watercare water operations controller Rex Chou apologised for any inconvenience caused by the temporary pipes and said the matter should be dealt with soon.
“Unfortunately, the summer storms created a considerable backlog of work for our maintenance crews, and the temporary solution has been in place longer than we’d normally expect,” he said.
“We hope to start work on the permanent solution later this month, installing a new polyethylene pipe under the driveway to connect to all four properties. We’d like to thank these customers for their patience.”
