After living in Harmelia for 15 years, an elderly couple is at their wits’ end regarding sewage overflowing into their garden.
The sewage apparently poses a threat to their health.
The residents, who live on Paula Street, said in recent weeks sewage overflowed into their garden on three separate occasions.
Costa Mavronicolas said the sewage flows out of a manhole located on his property and floods his garden.
He said when the manhole overflows there is anywhere between 10cm and 12cm of sewage.
According to Mavronicolas, the problem started roughly 12 years ago and occurs most frequently after heavy rains or a thunderstorm.
“One of the recent overflows was so bad that I had to take my wife to the hospital because she could not breathe,” said Mavronicolas.
“At the hospital, she was put on a nebulizer.”
Mavronicolas believes the cause of his problem is the size of the current sewerage infrastructure.
In his opinion, the pipes are too small for the amount of waste that needs to be removed from the area.
ALSO READ:
Illegal dumping can negatively affect your health
“Either another sewerage pipe must be installed parallel to the current pipe or a larger pipe must be put in the ground.
“We are very frustrated about our situation here and there is not much that we can do about it,” said Mavronicolas.
In the hope of reducing the flooding in his garden, Mavronicolas dug a drainage trench and hopes to deepen it in the near future to remove sewage from his property.
“We are proud of our home and our garden but we are left frustrated when the sewage overflows.”
Mavronicolas said although the municipal workers did visit his property to try to unblock the sewerage pipe he said it was only a matter of time before it happened again.
Mavronicolas said whenever sewage flows into his garden he spends additional funds on cleaning supplies to help clean his garden.
A request for comment was sent to City of Ekurhuleni on November 3 and requested again several days later. At the time of publishing no comment was received.
Also follow us on:
