Residents angry about “nasty stuff” on the street in Island Bay after rainstorm

Report from RNZ by Bill Hickman
Residents in Island Bay were disgusted and angry to find a stream of faecal matter and sanitary products from overflowing maintenance-hole covers during heavy rain overnight. Footage posted on social media showed a dirty yellow plume extending into surface flooding along the suburb’s Parade during the heavy rain and lightning storms which at about 1am.

Resident Richard Peters said he and his partner were woken by the lightning and rain and – after suffering flood damage to their property in April – went outside to check on the street.

They were confronted by extensive amounts of sewage washed up on the edges of surface flooding along the Parade’s cyclelane and footpaths.

“Disgust. It stunk, it was awful and it was even worse once [the water] had subsided. You can see it all along the cycle way and a bunch of the road. There’s so much of it.

“It was literally pieces of poo on the ground, tampons and brown water, It was feral and disgusting,” Peters said.

He said the situation this morning was especially troubling as flood waters had come beneath their home during severe weather in April.

“The rain was much less last night than April and the fact that it couldn’t handle that … This isn’t good enough,” Peters said. He was now concerned that – in cleaning up following the previous flooding – people had been exposed to unhealthy contaminants.

Councillor Nureddin Abdurahman was visiting homes in the community at about 10.30am. He said there was a lot of anger over the water infrastructure’s inability to cope with last night’s rain.

“It’s absolutely unacceptable what I saw. Some of the people, their gateways’ flooded with nasty stuff. It’s unbelievable,” Abdurahman said.

He said the council needed to have a hard look at the roading layout and the infrastructure in the area. “It is just frustrating. The community is very, very angry. This is unacceptable,” he said.

Abdurahman said he would share what he had seen with the mayor and council officers and would do his best to make sure the community’s concerns were heard.

“My community have been going through a really tough time in the last couple of months. Now another one coming in. I’m sorry but we will solve this, we will work together and I join them in raising the issue,” Abdurahman said.