Graffiti in EnergyAustralia’s sights

The title of this post comes from a press release that Energy Australia sent me back in April.

Energy Australia cleans up about 40 instances of graffiti per week, and graffiti reports are up by 50% since 2007. It costs Energy Australia (and energy consumers) $500,000 a year to remove graffiti. From the press release:

“Residents in suburbs with high reports of graffiti are doing the right thing in alerting us to the problem so our crews can remove the graffiti quickly.

“We’ve found that the quicker we remove graffiti from our equipment the more of a deterrent it is to other vandals.

“Graffiti vandalism is not only a blight on neighbourhoods but it’s a safety risk and most importantly, it’s a crime.

“That’s why we’ve doubled our efforts and appealed to the community to report graffiti to help us keep the network clean and safe.”

The table below is from the press release. Between 2008 and April 2010, there were 194 graffiti reports in Canada Bay. About 100 of those reports were from me, so it's nice to know there are others out there lodging reports. I've noticed that over the last two years, Energy Australia's turn around time has improved dramatically. They now sometimes remove graffiti only a few days after its been reported - which is great to see.