Imagine purchasing your new home only for there to be minimal water infrastructure and for your sewage to be stored in a pit.

Trucks come every day to remove the waste.

This is the reality for more than 700 homes in the townships of Angle Vale, Virginia, Roseworthy and the suburb of Riverlea, where residents are having their sewage transported up to 40 kilometres by road to Adelaide’s main wastewater treatment plant.

The plant is also at capacity.

Playford Council Deputy Mayor Clint Marsh said most of the homes having their sewage trucked fall within his council area.

“[Normally,] when you go to the toilet, and you … flush it, it goes down the pipes and it’s sent to a treatment plant, that’s it,” Mr Marsh told 7.30. 

“It’s unbearable [for] many residents.

“And that is not a standard of living that we should have in 2024.”

As Adelaide’s urban growth boundary expands, Mr Marsh said on average, 10 people a day were forecast to move to the City of Playford during the next 20 years.

“We have this issue where at local government and a state government level, we like to invest in the infrastructure post-growth,” Mr Marsh told 7.30.

“If we just had a common-sense approach and said the moment a development starts to get built, let’s do everything, we wouldn’t have these hassles.”

Angle Vale resident Sarah Baker has mains connected but says the area’s infrastructure shortcomings go beyond sewage and water.

“These roads have been classified as country roads, they’re not anymore. 

“They need lighting, stormwater and appropriate infrastructure management that the state government is responsible for.”

‘Get on and build’

South Australia Housing Minister Nick Champion acknowledged the state has fallen behind when it comes to infrastructure.

“We’ve really in Adelaide hit the absolute ends of the supply of both sewerage and water infrastructure,” Mr Champion told 7.30.

“We’re having spectacular growth.

The government announced $1.5 billion for new mains water and sewerage connections to rapidly growing Adelaide suburbs in June.

“I wish some of that money had been spent in years gone past, but I don’t have a time machine … so we’ve just got to get on and build,” Mr Champion said.

The investment will see kilometres of new water pipes laid, but it won’t be a quick fix — and trucks will continue to pick up sewage, known as tankering, for at least another four years.

“It will end tankering in time,” Mr Champions said.

“Over the next four years, we’re putting in place $1.5 billion worth of infrastructure … and what that will mean is that those homes that are currently being tankered in places like Angle Vale will go on to the main sewerage, will go on to mains water,” he said.

Mr Champion said he understood residents’ frustrations and lessons would be learned from the problems seen in Adelaide’s new northern housing developments.

“Previous governments should have taken greater responsibility,” he said.

“They should have made greater investments … it includes all governments of both stripes

An all-too-common trend

While it is a specific and pressing issue in the region, Property Council of Australia CEO Mike Zorbas says underinvestment in infrastructure to support new housing construction is an issue nationwide.

“It’s very problematic in the context of a national housing crisis,” Mr Zorbas told 7.30.

“If you think about recent reports in Melbourne, Melbourne Water has an average delay of 12 months in connecting new developments and up to two years.

Melbourne Water told 7.30 it had employed 30 extra staff to help process applications more quickly. It said some applications took longer because of their complexity.

Mr Zorbas said the federal and state governments want 1.2 million homes built by 2029 to ease the nation’s housing crisis. 

He said higher levels of infrastructure investment will also be needed to help meet that target.

“Current estimates are that we’re going to fall 260,000 homes short,” he said.

“So we need every premier, every planning minister, every housing minister, to work with utilities, to work with electricity providers, water and sewerage providers around the nation, to unlock the last mile of infrastructure [so] that we can make up that very big housing gap.”

It was a statement Mr Champion agreed with as he said governments must act on both fronts to fix the housing crisis.

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