Thousands of litres of sewage trucked from Angle Vale, Riverlea, Roseworthy and Virginia trucked out daily

Don’t follow these trucks too closely if you’re on the roads in Adelaide’s north. There are a lot of them and they’re doing a job the government says is unacceptable.

More than 100,000 litres of sewage are being trucked daily from northern Adelaide suburbs not connected to mains because of SA Water connection failures.

Housing Minister Nick Champion warned Adelaide was running out of trucks to cart the effluent – an average of at least ten vacuum trucks per day has been required.

They are carting sewage to Bolivar Wastewater Treatment Plant from Angle Vale, Riverlea, Roseworthy and Virginia.

SA Water told The Advertiser tankering wastewater enabled housing developments to progress and was “only intended as a temporary service until the delivery of wastewater network upgrades”.

Housing Minister Nick Champion, UDIA Chief Executive Liam Golding and Arup Design Orr Shallev at the West End Brewery Site master planner announcement. in April. Picture: Brett Hartwig

But Housing Minister Nick Champion branded as “unacceptable” the long-term trucking of wastewater into Bolivar from northern suburbs.

“Firstly, it’s just not an acceptable long-term solution for communities and we shouldn’t expect any community to deal with that in the long term in the suburban area,” he told The Advertiser.

“But the second thing about it is it’s really impractical, because there’s only so many trucks that can do this.

“We’re not only at the limit of our physical capacity of our sewer and mains water pipes, we’re also at the capacity of our sewer trucks, our capacity to tanker sewage.

“So this is not a solution, other than a temporary solution while you’re building the houses and building the infrastructure.”

SA Water said the multiple tankers operated up to seven days per week, collecting the sewage from “dedicated storage facilities in new developments”, arguing this was “a safe and reliable interim service”.

“Tankering involves the construction of infrastructure, such as wastewater access chambers and stations, with vacuum trucks extracting sewage and safely transporting it to a wastewater treatment plant,” an SA Water spokesman said in a statement.

“Depending on the size of trucks and wastewater volumes, multiple tankers operate one to seven days per week … On average, the total daily volume of wastewater transported to the plant is 105 kilolitres.

“ … The cost of tankering and associated infrastructure is negotiated between developers and SA Water, based on individual development agreements.”

SA Water argues this volume is “insignificant” compared to Bolivar’s average daily flow of more than 180,000kl.

But 105kl per day would require transportation by more than ten 10,000 litre trucks – a typical capacity for vacuum trucks available in Adelaide.

Independent analysis for The Advertiser of SA Water’s annual spending on construction and purchase of infrastructure, plant and equipment for the past five financial years shows this ranging from $440m to $533m annually.

The figures by financial year were: 2023 $533m; 2022 $442m; 2021 $440m; 2020 $531m; and 2019 $514m.

Originally published as Thousands of litres of sewage trucked from Angle Vale, Riverlea, Roseworthy and Virginia trucked out daily