Sir
Last year I contacted the Beacon about a sewerage leak from Wyesham into Redbrook Road and unless the sewerage problem is dealt with more efficiently it shows signs of becoming a regular occurrence. Welsh Water apparently subcontracts attendance to sewers to Wessex Water, and Monmouthshire County Council agreed to monitor the action taken by them on this situation. It appears that Wessex Water blame the problem on the residents of Ridgeway, Wyesham (and any other residents in the vicinity whose sewerage pipes flow into Ridgeway), for putting things down their toilets and drains that they shouldn't be doing. The problem occurred in 2006, 2008 and again now in 2009.
On the evening of Friday 26th June, there was a stream of overflowing sewage along several metres of Redbrook Road Monmouth. At 8.30 pm I rang 0800 085 3968 to report the matter. The next morning the problem remained. We rang again to be told the job was on the work schedule. We emphasised that pedestrians on a narrow pavement were being splashed by passing motorists. On Saturday afternoon we rang to ascertain the position. By then we were told that the sewer had been flushed out with disinfectant but this had not solved the problem – they would have to send a tanker to suck out the blockage. As they were on skeleton staff over the weekend, they couldn't say exactly when this would be. The problem continued until Sunday morning before it was fixed. This means that from Friday night all pedestrians, any wheels of children's buggies, soles of shoes and dog's paws would have been contaminated with sewerage and unless people stripped off beforehand or cleaned their buggies etc, they would have been taking contamination into their homes or other premises that they were visiting.
On previous occasions children were being splashed on the way to school and would have been taking sewage on their shoes into school premises. On this occasion we had to leave our premises in order to be able to face a meal without the smell and other residents reported they received comments from alarmed passers-by and visiting walkers.
I have asked Monmouthshire County Council's Public Health department to check the sewerage route from Wyesham with their Planning department and Welsh Water to ascertain how many dwellings are feeding into this particular sewer. Clearly the situation is not at all satisfactory and someone needs to take responsibility for finding a permanent solution to this health hazard. As things stand the adequacy of the current system needs to be urgently addressed and certainly radically amended before any residential expansion is planned!
Angela Hoyle
Monmouth