Sewage spilled onto a public road and neighbouring properties in Waihola after vandals damaged a wastewater pipe over the weekend, Clutha District Council says.<\/p>\n
The council said the breather pipe on Titri Rd, in the South Otago township about 40km south of Dunedin, had been deliberately damaged more than once.<\/p>\n
Contractors carried out an urgent after-hours callout to contain the overflow and make the area safe.<\/p>\n
Clutha District Council wastewater and stormwater supervisor Peter Falconer said the damage went well beyond the cost of repairs.<\/p>\n
“This was not a harmless act of vandalism. The damage resulted in sewage discharging into public spaces and neighbouring properties, creating a genuine health and safety risk for residents, staff and contractors.”<\/p>\n
The council must now have a replacement pipe made and installed. The new pipe and the after-hours callout are likely to cost more than $2000.<\/p>\n
A council spokesperson said the pipe played an important role in running the town’s wastewater network.<\/p>\n
“Deliberately damaging these assets can result in environmental contamination, unnecessary emergency callouts, disruption to essential services and avoidable costs to our ratepayers.”<\/p>\n
The spokesperson said such damage also pulled resources away from maintaining and improving critical services.<\/p>\n
The council is asking anyone who sees suspicious behaviour around public infrastructure, or who has information about the incident, to report it as soon as possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sewage spilled onto a public road and neighbouring properties in Waihola after vandals damaged a wastewater pipe over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":615139,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[67,1080,687,111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-615138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-dunedin-otago","tag-housing-and-infrastructure","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=615138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/615139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}