What a shower

By Casey Neill
A WANDIN North resident has slammed Melbourne Water after hearing that Seville Pool may be closed due to leaking while drinking water is seeping from a nearby aqueduct.
John Van Den Boom’s property backs onto an aqueduct known as the Silvan Inlet Channel.
Mr Van Den Boom complained to Melbourne Water about the cracks in the aqueduct and decided to contact the media when he heard the swimming pool was under threat.
“What this leaks in one day the swimming pool might lose in a whole year,” he said.
“I used to swim in Seville when I was a teenager and my kids swam there and now my grandkids. I don’t want it to go.”
Mr Van Den Boom said he is “good with figures” and estimates the aqueduct is leaking 250,000 megalitres of water a day through the cracks and holes along the open concrete channel, some the size of a basketball.
“People have got to preserve water, they’re not allowed to wash their cars, they’re not allowed to do this, but bloody Melbourne Water’s the worst offender,” he said.
Melbourne Water external affairs manager Ben Pratt said the company allocates $2 million per year for maintenance on its 166 kilometres of aqueducts.
“Melbourne Water has an inspection, monitoring and maintenance regime for its aqueducts to ensure that losses from leakage are minimised,” he said.
Mr Pratt said Melbourne Water’s annual losses from their system total one per cent of water collected.
The Silvan Inlet Channel was constructed in the 1930s to transfer water from O’Shannassy Reservoir and Coranderrk Aqueduct to Silvan Reservoir.
The upper section of the aqueduct was decommissioned in 1995.
A section about 5.7 km long remains to transfer water from Coranderrk Aqueduct to Silvan Reservoir.
Mr Pratt said the aqueduct transfers about seven or eight megalitres of water per day.
He said the channel is not a major part of Melbourne Water’s infrastructure but still has a role to play.
Seville Township Pool Committee president Bill Dobson said Melbourne Water asked the shires to prove that their pools were not leaking before they would fill them. “You can understand that too with the way the water situation is,” he said.
He said the Yarra Ranges Shire had to carry out maintenance on the pool and the other eight pools in the shire.
The Seville Pool was built using voluntary labour and opened on 29 December 1956.
It was handed over to the Yarra Ranges Shire a few years later.
“Since then they haven’t done any capital works and then they say it’s run down, it’s not up to standard,” Mr Dobson said.
“We’ve never really asked for anything in this town, we’ve been self sufficient and it’s probably come the time when, we pay rates too and we need to get what we deserve as well.”
Mr Dobson said protests against losing the pool prompted the council to conduct a survey of Seville residents, carried out before Christmas last year.
The aim of the survey was to find out whether the townspeople want funds allocated to repair the pool or would prefer the money be spent elsewhere.
Mr Dobson said the results should be out by February or March.
“We’re not sure what they’re going to come up with but it just depends on what the people of Seville want and how keen they are to keep it (the pool),” he said.
“Councillor Graham Warren has asked the Township Group to trust him that he’ll do the right thing by the people of Seville.”