Council pay out nearly $4m and rising to truck out sewage after major Windsor sewer main fail

It’s not just the cost to ratepayers – the money will almost certainly come out of Council’s Sewer Reserve fund – it’s also the dust and noise that nearby residents and businesses have suffered for months as sewage is trucked out from behind Windsor Toyota, day and night.

It’s all the result of a failure back in January of what’s called Sewer Rising Main C (SRM C) which Council estimates failed around January 17 and has still not been repaired.

Cllr Eddie Dogramaci brought the issue up at this month’s full council meeting – he put a Motion up – asking why it was taking so long to get repairs, why the pump station failed in the first place, and why it’s costing so much to truck the sewerage out. He says it’s between $2000-$2500 a truckload.

Nearby residents, particularly on Macquarie St, are far from pleased as dust finds its way into their homes and coats their cars. Several have contacted the Post with complaints about the situation

One resident – who didn’t wish to be named – told us, “the trucks started before the floods this year and stopped, obviously, during the floods, then began again.

One of 5 companies contracted by Hawkesbury Council to truck out sewerage

“They are operating at all hours of the day and well into the early hours of the morning, and often as frequently as 15-minute intervals. They are just very loud and it gets very dusty.

“They seem to be going all day and night and bring terrible dust within my unit. I feel for [Windsor] Toyota having to clean their cars every morning.”

The trucks are using a small driveway alongside Windsor Toyota to access the sewage main and the truck movements haven’t stopped.

Hawkesbury Council has employed up to 5 companies to truck the sewage from the broken main to the sewage treatment plant at a cost so far of $3.9m.

Repairs to the main are expected to be several million dollars more. Cllr Dogramaci believes the total cost will reach $7m before the issue is resolved.

Cllr Dogramaci has asked for maintenance records for the main and wants to know why it failed.

In a written reply to the councillor, Council management said, “it’s difficult to determine what more could have been done, if anything, to predict the failure, given the most recent condition assessment had indicated over a decade of life remaining”.

The management statement also said, “the cause of the failure has not been determined and it may be challenging to determine the exact mechanism of failure. However, all reasonable attempts will be made to determine the cause.”

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