Western Australia Water Corp Faces Criticism Over Leaking Tanks and Sewage Spills

For two years, residents in one of the driest parts of Western Australia have watched thousands of litres of water leaking from a Water Corp owned tank.

Linda Rose, who lives south of the wheatbelt town of Southern Cross, about 400 kilometres from Perth, said she and many of her neighbours have watched the rusty water tank, supplied by the Goldfields water pipeline, leak into the ground.

"It's just so frustrating," Ms Rose told Nadia Mitsopoulos on 102.5 ABC Radio Perth.

"This tank wouldn't even be over 100,000 litres.

Ms Rose said neighbours have told her that reports to the Water Corp have been unsuccessful.

"The locals have actually seen the Water Corporation checking on the tank," she said.

"What they're saying is that they can't actually do anything just in case the tank ruptures, and there's not enough money in the budget to fix the tank.

"Now the ground around the tank is so waterlogged it can't absorb any more water.

Repairs coming soon

Water Corp chief executive Pat Donovan has viewed a video supplied by Ms Rose of water pouring out of the tank, and said he can "I can absolutely understand people's frustration".

"I know it's not what our customers expect of us, particularly as we're asking them to partner with us in being water wise," he said.

Mr Donovan said that while the leak had been present for some time it had not been losing water to such a large extent, until recently.

"I'm told that as part of our routine monitoring there was a report of a slight leak a couple of years ago, and that was then identified as having become worse in late March of this year, and then significantly worse in May.

"We've been working since then to find a suitably qualified contractor with availability to do the work.

"We managed to secure one late last week. Our teams went out to site with them and they'll be kicking off that work this week, hopefully.

'We can't fix every leak immediately'

Mr Donovan said that such was the scale of the Water Corp's infrastructure it was impossible to get to every leak quickly.

"We have about 54,000 kilometres of pipe, largely buried, across the state," he said.

"If you add it all up it's enough actually pipe to wrap around the equator one and a quarter times.

He said they get many reports from the public about water leaks, as well as operating a proactive leak detection program which surveys around 7,000 kilometres of water mains each year.

The scale of the vast network means that when leaks are reported or detected, repairs have to be prioritised.

"We prioritise it firstly based on safety to the public and to our people. Then we look at impacts in terms of customer supply, if there's interruption to customer supply," he said.

"And then we look at the scale of the water loss.

"We can't fix every leak. We just can't get to all of them. Some of them we do monitor and then do condition assessments to understand when we need to intervene.

Pipe patched with wood

Listener Christine, who lives in Wagin in WA's Great Southern region, described seeing a water main patched with a piece of wood.

"When there's a leak, if it's a small leak, they come along and they put a wedge of pine wood in there, and the wood absorbs the water and swells and blocks the hole," she said.

"As the hole increases they put more wedges in there.

"I have counted one hole with 13 wedges, and that eventually burst.

"That was a constant puddle that I took my dogs through every summer for a couple of years, swimming, when there was no other water in town.

Sewage spill complaints

It is not only water pipes that can require urgent repairs.

In June 2025 a major sewage spill covered a park and left several homes uninhabitable in the southern Perth suburb of Spearwood.

This month another sewerage blockage at Fremantle Markets led to raw sewage spilling into nearby dwellings, something residents are still struggling to cope with.

While Water Corp sent workers out to do an initial clean-up, some residents told the ABC they were far from satisfied with the response.

"There's still poo in between floorboards, under plants, soaked up in the cabinets. The stench is horrible," said Karen, who lives in the affected apartment complex.

"Now they've left one of our residents living in this. They did do a clean but it's not thorough enough.

Mr Donovan said the Water Corp tried to work with insurance companies to respond to situations where sewage escaped into homes.

"We very much empathise with people having any inundation of wastewater into their homes or their properties. It's certainly not nice," he said.