Residents of an estate in Emly have been dealing with raw sewage bubbling up through manholes and backing up into their houses over the past couple of weeks.
The pumping station at Glen Court stopped working earlier this month and the human waste from the occupied houses in the controversial privately owned estate was not being drained away.
This coupled with the heavy rain recently saw the sewers overflowing.
Tipperary County Council has had to step in to get the drains cleaned out but Cllr Anne Marie Ryan says the residents were left in limbo too long before someone took responsibility.
“A couple of weeks ago the pumping station stopped working so the raw sewage wasn’t being pumped away into the main system and then of course with the really bad weather the last couple of weeks some of the manholes started to overflow and sewage was backing up into peoples houses. So myself and Councillor Mary Hanna Hourigan contacted Irish Water. Irish Water said not our problem – speak to the local authority – the local authority then replied saying it’s a private estate so we’re kind of going around in circles. But then the local authority have arranged for a company to go out and de-sludge all the manholes and the drainage and drain it all off.”
The Local authority is in the process of taking the estate in charge but has been facing complications along the way.
Cllr Ryan says these problems have to be overcome immediately because it’s just not safe for the people who are living there.
“While we have a short term solution we still have a long term problem. A DPI developer provided infrastructure estate that needs to be brought into charge by Tipperary County Council to make the estate safer and more environmentally friendly for the people who live there because you can’t actually live in an estate where you’ve got raw sewage.”
