Residents of Beetham Gardens held two peaceful protests yesterday to bring attention to the sewage issues they are currently facing in their community. The placard-bearing residents protested on the Priority Bus Route (PBR) in the morning before taking their plight to the highway in the afternoon.
Vice president of the Beetham Gardens Community Council, Shaquille McIntosh, said, “We have a sewer problem that has been ongoing for seven years, going on eight years in October. We have yet to have an official or a proper statement from any agencies as to when, how, and why anything will be taking place concerning the sewer.”
Moments before residents gathered along the highway, the Water and Sewage Authority (WASA) issued a release saying that works to remedy overflows around 24th Street, Beetham Gardens, were now complete, and the area was fully sanitised.
The statement said, “In the process of pump down activity to reduce the overflows, investigations confirmed that this event was in fact caused by the removal of sewer line end caps and further exacerbated by indiscriminate dumping of garbage, oils, and grease into the sewer system connected to the HDC building, located in the vicinity of 24th Street.”
WASA said the wastewater team immediately removed the blockage and replaced the compromised sewer line.
However, WASA added that the line replacement was done as a temporary measure to bypass the existing clean-out and mitigate the potential for overflow at this connection.
But president of the Community Council, Joel Lee, said the overflows around 24th Street were just part of the problem.
“More than seven years now, the lines collapsing in several parts of our community,” he said.
Lee said two children were recently hospitalised because of the polluted water and its stench.
“The big main collapsed, so all the sewer water that coming down from Mount Hope Hospital, El Dorado, St Augustine and all here coming down here and coming out into people’s homes,” Lee said.