As you probably are aware, we now have a new company looking after the cleaning and fumigating of our urbanisation sewers. They visited today and I went with them to see how good (or bad) our sewer system is.

The first and most important thing to tell you all is that our sewers are full of wet wipes and baby wipes which have been put down the toilets. There were two sewer lines which were almost completely blocked.

The men showed me two shafts which have been built wrongly. Instead of the sewer run being at the bottom of the shaft there’s a ‘well’ of a few inches into which every conceivable bit of filth has gathered over the years. This, of course is a blockage waiting to happen.

The cost of dealing with this faulty construction will be 150 euros per sewer and I have authorised this work to be carried out.

While the men found few cockroaches in our sewers, when they opened the drains to the next urbanisation to the east (towards the sea) there were millions running everywhere. I have sent a message to the president of this urbanisation telling him of this problem.

If you have visitors coming out for the summer or are renting out your house please will you tell everyone not to put wipes or kitchen paper down the toilets. Not only do you risk blocking the urbanisation sewers, you could block the drainage run from your own house which will cost you money to clean out.

One bit of good news, the men found no sign of tree roots in the urbanisation drains. But please bear in mind that the root problem is far more likely to occur in the runs from houses into the urbanisation sewers, and the cost of this clearing out falls on individual owners and not on the urbanisation.

Tony Mayes, President.