Dominic Bareham THE problem of sewage flowing from a manhole cover and making the back garden of a Belton home unusable has still not been solved, according to the homeowner.

Dominic Bareham

THE problem of sewage flowing from a manhole cover and making the back garden of a Belton home unusable has still not been solved, according to the homeowner.

Betty Harper, 61, of Station Road North, said pieces of excrement as well as toilet paper had been gathering in her garden, which is periodically flooded by up to 4,000 litres of water, much of it raw sewage.

As a result she has been unable to take the horses and dogs she keeps as pets for walks around her garden, while young children visiting her home are unable to play on the lawn.

To make matters worse, she is afraid to use her toilet because the pipe flows into the sewerage system and she feared adding to an already bad situation.

Her friend Mark Nuttall, who visited her over Christmas, said at times there could be up to 4,000 litres of water flowing into her garden, reaching four inches high around the manhole cover.

He said: “The drains from the house go into the sewer - the same sewer that is backed up into the garden. Until this is sorted, basically we are struggling. If we go to the toilet then it is going to go into the same sewerage line as the one that is erupting on to the lawn. We might as well go outside and go to the toilet on the lawn.”

Mr Nuttall said the problems had been happening on and off since Mrs Harper moved into the property 30 years ago, but Anglian Water had been unable to solve the problem.

He believed the problem originated at a pumping station in the village and said: “If it comes out of the manhole it is like having a burst water main in your garden.”

Anglian Water spokeswoman Collette Nicholls said there had been an airlock in one of the pipes leading from a pumping station in Station Road which prevented the sewage from being pumped around the system.

The result was the pipes started to overfill with sewage, which had to escape through the manhole cover.

The spokeswoman added that two new pumps had been fitted at the pumping station at the end of last summer.

She said although she could not guarantee there would be no repeat of the flooding, engineers would monitor the pumping station.

“I can't say it will never happen again. I can't guarantee that it would never happen but we will do our best to ensure that it doesn't. We will look at the actual station itself to check how its performing and investigate the best way forward,” she said.