Some Seven Oaks-area residents are voicing frustrations with the City of Winnipeg’s slow response to property and street damages caused by sewer line repairs that happened almost two months ago.
In late May, work on a new land drainage sewer shaft at Semple Avenue and Scotia Street, completed by a City-hired contractor, caused a breach in the combined sewer shaft. This breach ended up pumping grout – a cement mixture – into several nearby homes.
“We’re waiting, waiting on our insurance when we feel the City’s insurance should be involved,” said Kaitlin Bialek, whose Semple Avenue home was filled with cement.
The City should be saying, ‘yeah, we’re going to cover this, like, don’t worry about it.”
Bialek said the damage to her home is extensive, with repair estimates in the tens of thousands of dollars.
She said the city hasn’t been very responsive and she’s received no definitive answer, as of yet, as to whether or not the city will help in covering the repair costs.
“We can’t afford to have a hundred thousand dollars or fifty thousand dollars or whatever it ends up being,” she said, “We don’t have the money to just fix this problem that the city created.”
George Munroe’s home, right next to Bialek’s, was also impacted by the sewer shaft breach.
Munroe said his weeping tiles were filled with cement and the city left the street, marred by large spots of unearthed asphalt, in a state of disrepair.
“The city is responsible for these damages,” said Munroe. “Why should we, as homeowners, use our insurance company to pay for the damages?”
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