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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-05-05 Daily Xml
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Community Wastewater Management System

Ms SAVVAS (Newland) (16:03): I had the great pleasure, during my first speech yesterday, of foreshadowing a long-term commitment to and/or obsession with the Tea Tree Gully Community Wastewater Management scheme. In the City of Tea Tree Gully council area, there are approximately 4,700 septic tanks affecting over 8,000 residents in the suburbs of Modbury, Hope Valley, St Agnes, Fairview Park, Banksia Park, Yatala Vale, Ridgehaven, Surrey Downs, Redwood Park, Vista and Highbury. Of the 4,700 tanks, 4,000 or so are in the seat of Newland, with others spattered across Morialta and Wright.

The house should not be of the impression at any stage that the scheme is a uniform one. The Tea Tree Gully CWMS network in fact comprises approximately 76 separate networks of sewerage and a complex combination of standalone tanks, soakage trenches and deep drainage. It is something that I know all too well, as the City of Tea Tree Gully council, where I was formerly a councillor, currently has full responsibility for maintenance and management of the network.

In fact, ratepayers on the network are required to pay a $745 service levy to the council each year for that maintenance, in addition to their council rates. The tanks have to be pumped out every few years and, depending on the placement of the tanks and the inspection point, many residents have to dig up pavers and garden beds to allow the pumping contractors to attend to the tank.

At one house I doorknocked in Fairview Park the inspection point was under the house. The resident was kind enough to show me the way he has to remove bricks to allow the hose into the connection point. At another house in Banksia Park, a couple have a septic tank in their master bedroom. Every few years, they have to rip up the carpet of that bedroom and allow the hose through the bedroom window.

The system is in many ways nonsensical. In many streets, there are a combination of both septic tanks and SA Water mains. In fact, on the road that I live, a main thoroughfare, there are both septic tanks and SA Water mains. Many residents across my electorate would be unaware that they pay an exorbitant levy for an archaic septic system, when often their direct neighbours do not. In fact, on the main thoroughfare of Elizabeth Street in Tea Tree Gully, there is a point where only one house is on the septic.

To add to the nonsensical nature of the system, the easements for CWMS pipework are not required by SA Water to be listed on title searches. As a result, for many years residents have purchased properties and been unaware of pipework in their front yards or backyards and built on top of them. This is, in fact, how the residents came to have the tank in their bedroom: they simply built an extension and did not find out where the tank was until the septic system was later centrally maintained and pumped by the council.

On 3 June 2020, before even having a candidate for the seat of Newland, the Labor Party announced a $92 million plan to scrap the CWMS and connect residents to SA Water sewerage, after more than 40 years on the system. It was the Labor Party who committed to bring residents of the north-eastern suburbs into the 21st century. On 10 June, exactly a week later, the Liberal Party committed only $65 million to a transition project, leaving residents and the Tea Tree Gully council with uncertainty about how the third stage would be costed and, most importantly, who would pay for it.

On 15 November 2021, the member for Wright, the now Premier, the Deputy Premier and I held a forum with over 200 residents. We listened to residents and took on their concerns before announcing in January 2022 that we would not only convert residents to SA Water mains but we would scrap the $745 levy to the council from 1 July this year. We committed that all residents would become SA Water customers for their sewerage services from 1 July no matter what stage of the transition they were in, providing immediate savings to the average household of hundreds of dollars per year.

Residents will also, under our plan and our plan only, pay no remediation costs as a result of converting their property to the SA Water sewerage network. Labor will also create a dedicated customer service unit within SA Water to provide information and provide clear time frames to Tea Tree Gully CWMS residents. I thank the house for the opportunity to speak not once but twice in 24 hours about our network and look forward to finally delivering for our residents.

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