“Every time someone uses their toilet, they go through my yard

QUIET Doherty Drive, Elletson Flats, St Andrews, belies the unsightly scene lurking in housewife Lois Lindo’s backyard. Every time someone in the townhouses in Golding Circle, Mona, at the top end of the property, uses their bathroom or does some other household chore that requires water, liquid waste flows down and collects on it. property.

“Every day, 24 hours a day, it’s a sewage system — that means every time someone takes a shower, washes their hands, uses the toilet, it goes through my yard. Anything you can think of that goes on in the bathroom, that goes on at home, goes in here,” said Lindo The Jamaica Observer on Sunday during visits to her premises.

The 61-year-old plant lover, who lives with her elderly mother, says the problem arose in June after the National Water Commission (NWC) looked into a sewage problem affecting the Golding Circle housing development.

“They had a problem still in the scheme and it was moving on the main road. The NEC came, and I don’t know what they did, but they no longer have it in the scheme – it is now in my yard. Their problem was dumped in my lap,” said a frustrated Lindo.

According to Lindo, the connection to the sewer system, which is located on the slopes above her house and has passed through her backyard through a hatch since she was a child, became a nightmare because it was not maintained.

“Dad gave them permission to put (put in) a system, hook them up to the sewage plant at Elletson Flats, but they never serviced it. I remember when I was a child, when I was 12 years old, they were building it, and now I am 61 years old, and I never saw them again before this disaster,” she said. Observer.

The homemaker, who says she has been calling the NWC since June to report the problem, told the newspaper that she had to take action last Friday to give herself a temporary break from the sewage flow.

“I asked my gardener to dig a trench (in the hillside) so that the water would not flow into the yard. If we didn’t lay the trench on Friday, we wouldn’t be able to stand here,” she said, pointing to the surrounding space.

“If you notice, the grass is two different colors (because) it started to fall there.

“I have been calling them since June. They come, somehow fix it, it gets clogged again. All October I called and called and called (but) no one came and I was disappointed. It stressed me out because despite the stench and the mosquitoes, it was just ruining our lives, to be honest. I had to dig a trench out of desperation because the water was going everywhere,” she added.

Now, she says it’s a waiting game to see if the NWC comes to her rescue before the gallons of waste — kept at bay, if only barely — flood her yard.

“As you can hear, it is still working. It was driving me crazy that the sewage was starting to kill my plants. My dragons, all dead; all my little roses are dead. The system is old,” said Lindo.

In 2019, the NWC reported that the Elletson Flats treatment plant and another at Boscobel in St. Mary’s had been renovated at a cost of $620 million.

NWC is the primary provider of wastewater and sanitation services in Jamaica and collects wastewater from over 700,000 people across the island. The company operates almost 100 treatment facilities throughout the island.

Central sewer systems are located in Kingston and St. Andrews, southeast St. Catherine (Portmore), Montego Bay in St. James, Ocho Rios in St. Ann, and Negril in Westmoreland.

In addition, NWC is responsible for small sewage systems associated with residential developments in various parts of the country.

Raw sewage from the Golding Circle community on Golding Avenue in Papin, St Andrew flows through these bushes into the backyard of homemaker Lois Lindo, who lives on Dougherty Drive in nearby Elletson Flats, St Andrew. (Photo: Garfield Robinson)