Thousands of Tea Tree Gully Council ratepayers with septic tanks to get connected to mains sewerage at a cost of $65 million
Thousands of northeastern residents with septic tanks will save hundreds of dollars when their homes are connected to mains sewerage. But the project will come at a huge cost to taxpayers.
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The State Government has announced it will spend $65 million connecting thousands of properties with septic tanks in Adelaide’s northeast to mains sewerage.
Residents and businesses have experienced increasing problems in recent years with a community wastewater management system (CWMS) operated by Tea Tree Gully Council.
State Opposition leader Peter Malinauskas announced last week that he would spend $92 million connecting 4700 properties to SA Water’s sewerage network if Labor won the next election.
This was followed on Tuesday by an announcement by Environment Minister David Speirs that a deal already had been negotiated with SA Water to spend $65 million on a similar program over the next few years.
Mr Speirs said he had been lobbied by northeastern Liberal MP Richard Harvey to take action to improve the CWMS, built in the 1960s as Adelaide rapidly expanded.
The ageing system, which consists of buried concrete tanks and more than 110km of crumbling clay pipes, has been the subject of numerous council reports detailing how millions was needed annually for upgrades and maintenance.
“The Tea Tree Gully CWMS has been a longstanding issue for residents in the north eastern
suburbs of Adelaide,” said Mr Speirs.
“For too long the CWMS has been mismanaged by the local council resulting in huge costs and inferior services to those connected to the system.”
Residents on the CWMS who paid annual service fees to the council would save up to $400 a year on sewerage costs once they were connected to SA Water, Mr Speirs said.
“Property owners are currently paying more than $700 a year to access the system with costs expected to rise to $900 in coming years if nothing is done,” he said.
“This is compared to $462 in sewerage charges for the average SA Water metropolitan customer.”
Mr Speirs said the 12,000 residents and business owners with septic tanks had been left to deal with increasing bills and poor services during the 16 years Labor was in power.
“Just like other councils have done, I now expect the Tea Tree Gully Council to make a financial contribution to this mess they’ve made,” he said.
Dr Harvey said the complaints about leakages and blockages within the CWMS was one of the biggest issues raised by local residents.
“My phone has been inundated with calls and visits to my office about the Tea Tree Gully CWMS who say they have been complaining about this service for years,” Dr Harvey said.
“Residents are sick and tired of having to fork out hundreds and hundreds of dollars a year to be connected to an essential service which is prone to failure.”
He said the CWMS had become “too big an issue for the local council to effectively deal with on their own”.
“The former government put this issue in the ‘too hard’ basket for more than a decade and I am proud to be finally delivering for those in the north eastern suburbs,” he said.
SA Water would assess the condition of the CWMS to map the immediate and long-term works required to bring its performance up to standard.
“It will work together with the City of Tea Tree Gully and the system’s customers on a plan to progressively take over operations,” Mr Speirs said.
Comment is being sought from Tea Tree Gully Council.