The West Street pong

Serious problems with the sewage system in West Street persisted for many years with continual complaints from shops and customers about the unpleasant smell, especially in hot weather. Several attempts were made by Anglian Water to remedy an obvious fault in the system but without success until early in 2012 when it was decided to close the road for four weeks to carry out remedial work.

The unpleasant odours that permeated almost daily in West Street were a particularly annoying nuisance which The Local newspaper reported has been with us "for about five years" (9th December 2011) but in fact dated back much further.

The problem had surfaced regularly for well over twenty years and during that time there have been several unsuccessful attempts to find the cause with the area towards the traffic lights being excavated on more than one occasion but the obnoxious odour always returned, much to the dismay of traders and shoppers in the nearby stores, particularly Boots the Chemists.

In 2008, Anglian Water finally admitted that a partial blockage of a drain or sewer may have been to blame and this seemed to be the most likely cause and so another round of road works meant a temporary closure of West Street that November while they investigated but again to no avail. No sooner had the workmen left than the pong was back. Then in December 2011, the water authority said in a statement that the exact source of the smell had finally been determined as "a dip in a water surface sewer where the pipe has come out of the line" thus allowing debris to settle.

Work was scheduled to start in March to replace a five metre section at a cost of £7,000 and would be undertaken overnight in order not to inconvenience local residents. This all sounded so simple and not particularly costly yet it had taken the authority almost a quarter of a century to reach this conclusion during which time this section of West Street has become one of the most insalubrious areas of the town and when the pong was at its most intense, even invading nearby shops, staff and customers repeatedly complained to the management thinking that their premises were to blame.

One person who should know about the pong was town councillor Shirley Cliffe (Bourne East) who lives nearby, close to the family shop that has been on West Street since the 19th century, although now under new occupancy. "I am pleased that the problem is finally going to be sorted out", she told the newspaper. "I just wish that it had been done sooner because there are times when the smell is really nasty and we have had to live with it."

The work finally began on March 26th but was completed in three weeks, a week ahead of schedule, and West Street was re-opened to traffic by Friday 20th April when a spokesman for Anglian Water told The Local newspaper: "This was a big job involving the repair of a fault in the pipe which was allowing odours escape from the sewer and out through the road gullies which take away rain and surface water. We also fitted odour traps to the gullies to remove any possibility of smells finding their way out from other parts of the network and we believe that the problem is now at an end."

Traders in West Street remained open while the work was carried out and customers were able to reach their premises along the pavement which was fenced off by wire netting. There were fears that trade might suffer but the outcome was not as bad as expected. Mark James, owner of the bakery Burtons of Bourne, one of the biggest of the shops affected, said: "The work was immediately outside our premises but we are pleased that it has now been completed and hopefully the problem has now been sorted out."

Councillor Cliffe, however, was cautious. "It will be nice to walk down the street and talk to people again without having to endure that smell. I do hope that the work has solved the problem but I am keeping my fingers crossed because if it has not then we could face another five years of battling to put it right."

REVISED APRIL 2012

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