While the flood defence system at Bridge of Earn held up against the deluge of water at the weekend, some residents believe the situation in their street could have been avoided.
Householders in Burnbank claim it was “inaction” by Scottish Water that led to their cul-de-sac being awash with raw sewage.
Although heavy rain combined with a rapid thaw caused the River Earn to burst its banks on Sunday morning, the problems for the residential area began 24-hours earlier.
Jim Robertson told The Courier he had been in touch with Scottish Water at 10am on Saturday, after noticing the pump used to disperse sewage had stopped working, but failed to receive an adequate response.
“As soon as I saw that, the alarm bells started ringing because we had a similar issue this time last year, which was fixed,” he said.
“I said to them that we had a very serious problem here, with raw sewage entering the open watercourse and they acknowledged that I had contacted them.
“Not long after, I called them back and they said they would deal with it within the hour. However, two hours later, there was no sign of anyone so I phoned back and got put through to someone at a call centre, who simply told me that it had been noted and was being dealt with.”
By late afternoon, Mr Robertson said the drain at the end of Burnbank was spewing “thousands” of litres of sewage into the burn that runs alongside the houses.
Despite repeated phone calls to Scottish Water, by 11.30pm that evening, the pensioner said he was left “climbing the walls” as the company failed to send anyone out to assess the situation. In desperation, he contacted SEPA (Scottish Environment Protection Agency) and police to see what they were able to do.
Unfortunately, they were unable to help Mr Robertson and his neighbours so he attempted to find a solution by contacting Drain-Cure in Perth.Pump failureAfter inspecting the affected area, they told him that the pump had indeed failed, but that they were unable to fix it.
At around 4am, a representative from Scottish Water visited Burnbank to talk Mr Robertson.
He added, “We went over all the problems and in the end he said that they would send someone out first thing in the morning.
“Before they even had the chance to arrive, we got a call from the police saying that there was a flood warning imminent, so when the guy got here at 8am, the flooding had already started.
“It wasn’t until 36 hours after they had been warned that Scottish Water were finally able to fix the pump. If they had solved the problem when I called them on Saturday or attended to it, then this part of Bridge of Earn would not have been flooded.
“The rain and melting snow didn’t cause the problems for us because the wall did its job and kept the overflow from the burn away from the houses. It was the drain that did the damage.”
Although Mr Robertson placed heavy criticism on the water company, he was quick to praise the efforts of the emergency services and SEPA.
He told The Courier fire-fighters worked “like Trojans” to pump water from the cul-de-sac in a bid to stop it reaching the properties and even commandeered extra equipment from local businesses.
A Scottish Water spokesman said that while their three large storm pumps continued to operate, their foul pump was affected.
He said, “Due to the extreme weather conditions of severe rainfall combined with the rapid thaw, the River Earn broke its banks.
“The flood waters inundated Scottish Water’s pumping station however, our three large storm pumps continued to operate normally and helped to mitigate the flooding impact for communities further up stream.
“The flood water however did impact on the foul pump, and hampered our engineers’ repair efforts. The environmental impact was minimal. Repair efforts are continuing.”
He added that staff had played a “significant” role alongside other agencies in helping to tackle the effects of flooding.