SA Water has announced that it stepped up its proactive maintenance of Adelaide’s sewer mains in the past 12 months by cleaning up more than 250 kilometres of pipes around the city and suburbs.
Increasing its funding allocation, the utility said it targeted 23 suburbs for the special treatment including Athelstone, Blackwood, Rostrevor and Wynn Vale, each of which experience a higher number of sewer incidents.
Senior Manager of Production and Treatment at SA Water, Lisa Hannant said the cleaning led to a 20 per cent reduction in overflows in the targeted suburbs in the past year.
“Keeping our sewers healthy is a shared responsibility and expanding our sewer cleaning program is one of the initiatives we’re investing in to help reduce the risk of pipe blockages and unsightly overflows,” Ms Hannant said.
“We continually track sewer overflows to identify the worst performing suburbs across the metropolitan area, especially where it’s resulted in sewage entering the environment, such as a creek or reserve,” she said.
“Our crews deploy ‘jet rodders’, which are hoses operated at a high pressure and use the power of water to dislodge and cut through blockages in suspect pipes before performing CCTV inspections to assess the impact of the cleaning and structural integrity of the sewer main.
“They also use additional attachments, such as a root saw, to safely break down roots without impacting the tree’s health and limit further growth.”
Ms Hannant said more than a quarter of blockages are caused by things that shouldn’t have been flushed.
“These ‘unflushables’ include cooking fats and oils, condoms, tampons and wet wipes, which are usually found blocking a customer’s connection point, increasing the risk of an overflow inside their home,” Lisa said.
“Only ever flushing the three Ps – pee, poo and (toilet) paper – and diverting cooking oil and food scraps to the bin will help customers protect their pipes and avoid these situations.”
