Lack of security at Bluff reservoir raises health and safety concerns

COMPROMISED security at the Bluff Reservoir has the Bluff Rate Payers’ Association’s chairman, Ivor Aylward concerned about the community’s safety and health.

The reservoir currently has holes on the fence and no door to the tower making access easy to anyone. According to Aylward, when the tower ran dry over a month ago, water department officials and the councillor attended to the scene and the safety concerns were highlighted.

“The lack of security to the tower and the reservoir was bought to the attention of our representatives regarding the hole in the fence and no door at the tower. To this day the security problem has not been seen to.”

“My concerns are vagrants who sleep at the bottom of that tower, they could mess up the computer system. They can also easily go into the reservoir, open the cover and pour whatever stuff inside there,” he said.  

He said the city cannot claim that there is no money to rectify the issue to ratepayers. He also said the ward 66 councillor, Zoë Solomon, could do more to help fast-track the process.

“The councillor should be the one knocking on their doors. I know she was sick recently but what I am saying is that she was voted into this ward by the people. Why must we expose things all the time before they are seen to?”

Explaining the process of reporting faults to the municipality, she said every issue is escalated on a continuous basis.

“As councillor, I action what I can and report all faults for assistance. Just like he does, to the same people. My point is the municipality is not responding, but they fixed the pump and the reservoir is filling and the people have water.”

“I work in a state of emergency, outages are an emergency. The area-based management reporting group all know it has to be fixed and now we wait,” she added.

A response from the city was not available at the time of publication.