Age of sewer pipeline not a factor in Beaconsfield spill as park prepares to reopen

Bruce Lee Oval in Beaconsfield is set to reopen this month, weeks after a burst sewage pipeline left the park contaminated and flooded neighbouring streets.

Water Corporation expects to hand the reserve back to the City of Fremantle on July 21, after the re-turfing of the grass is complete.

“Once handed back to the City, the park will be safe for public use,” a Water Corp spokesperson told The West Australian.

However, questions have been raised about WA’s water and sewerage infrastructure system as investigations continue into the cause of the sewage pipe failure.

Asked by Nationals deputy leader Peter Rundle if a similar incident was likely to happen again, Water Corporation boss Pat Donovan told State Parliament that the pipe that burst was still well within its expected service life, so there is no clear explanation for the failure yet.

“This was a unique event, in that it was a pipeline that was well within its asset lifespan; it was a 1966 pipeline,” Mr Donovan told State Parliament during estimates on Thursday.

“The pipeline itself has an asset life of about 80 years, so we are still working through exactly what occurred in terms of the root cause of the incident.”

Less than two weeks after the incident, the State Budget was released, which included an additional $35 million for the Water Corporation’s asset maintenance budget.

It’s believed the burst in Beaconsfield occurred after sewage was diverted to the area, to relieve pressure following another sewage burst in Spearwood.

It took the Water Corp several days to repair the burst pipe, causing considerable disruption to neighbouring residents.

Mr Donovan thanked all those affected by the incident for their patience during the fix of what was “undoubtedly a very unpleasant situation,” and said the corporation would learn from the incident.

“As we do with all such pipeline failures, we will be making sure that we learn from it and that it informs our asset management system going forward in terms of where we need to do proactive maintenance, further inspections or, indeed, asset replacement”, he said.

“We will continue to ensure that we understand exactly what happened and make sure that we feed that back into our asset management system.”