New Malden park shut by sewage leak (From Surrey Comet)

New Malden park shut by sewage leak

7:00am Friday 3rd September 2010 in

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A sewage-stricken New Malden children’s playground was once again shut down over the Bank Holiday weekend after it was flooded with human waste.

Green Lane Recreation Ground, which has been plagued by flooding problems for more than a decade, was closed by Thames Water after heavy rainfall on Wednesday caused a sewage tunnel underneath to overflow.

A Thames Water spokeswoman said it took two days to clear up the mess and that she was sorry for the distress caused to residents.

She said: “An engineer went down to the park first thing in the morning and asked the council to close it. The sheer volume of rainfall last Wednesday meant the system became overloaded.

“Our engineers responded immediately to cordon off the area. We asked the council to temporarily close the park for two days while we thoroughly cleaned the affected area.”

The spokeswoman could not rule out similar incidents happening in future, and claimed there was an increased risk of sewer overflows as a result of population growth and more erratic storms caused by climate change.

In the summer of 2008, Thames Water had already paid for the relocation of the children’s playground within the grounds to an area which would be less liable to be contaminated.

South Lane resident Mary Clark, who was a Kingston councillor up until May, said it had become an “annual event” for the park to be flooded with sewage.

Mrs Clark said: “Last week the sewage drains again erupted because of heavy rain flooding the park with raw sewage. The council have stuck notices on the gates stating, ‘park closed for maintenance’.

“Do they really think the public are naive enough to believe a park would be closed for maintenance during school holidays including a bank holiday weekend?

“Parks are for children to safely play in, not to spew out raw sewage every time it rains. It is bad enough that the drug squad have to patrol the park because of out-of-town young girls selling drugs.”

Green Lane Recreation Ground was identified by Kingston police in May as one of five drug-dealing hotspots in the borough, after a 15-year-old girl from Bethnal Green was found selling heroin and crack cocaine in January.

A Beresford Road resident, who did not want to be named, said: “It always seems to happen whenever there’s a lot of rain. The recreation ground was all shut at the weekend.

“We wondered why the situation arose. It just seems a regular thing. It is such a shame the park is closed and we can’t use it.”

Kingston Council was unable to comment after being asked.

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