How a rubbish trap is supposed to work

We've had good rain for the last few days - the run off has flushed plenty of rubbish down the local canals and into the rubbish traps that line the harbour. This trap in Lilyfield has come adrift twice so far this year - when it's floating around aimlessly, it isn't collecting rubbish like this.

When I see all this rubbish being scooped up by the trap, it makes the minor hassle of reporting it all seem worthwhile.

Common sense appears at Sydney Water

My com-padre sent me the following email earlier this week:

Please be informed that this location is currently under our Fortnightly inspection that our contractor attends the site every 2 weeks and they will remove the graffiti if there is any.

The idea is to send the message to offender that Sydney water will persistently remove the graffiti at this site until they stop.

Any question please feel free to contact me via this email address

Regards,

It's only taken a few years, but it's great to see that they've finally gotten the point. Inspect regularly, paint quickly and the problem quickly diminishes. Be proactive.

I've noticed around our area that the same idea seems to have sunk in at Australia Post, and things have much improved with the RTA. However, Energy Australia just don't appear to be interested in being more proactive. If I can convince Energy Australia to start undertaking regular visual inspections of their kiosks, I can hang up my camera and find a more interesting past time.

That familiar feeling of head repeatedly striking brick wall

I had a call from Sydney Water this morning - they were following up an item that I logged via their web site last week. It concerned a small utility cabinet outside a school.

Try as I might, I couldn't convince the person who rang me that the utility cabinet belonged to them - they couldn't find it on their asset management system. According to their system, the only asset they had in the vicinity was a pipe under the footpath, with nothing on the surface.

I told them I was going to call up Google Streetview, and they said they were already on it. They'd found a cabinet matching my description, but could not confirm that it belonged to them.

Luckily, I had a photo from last year of the cabinet when it was hit previously. I called up my photo, which had a much higher resolution than the blurry Google shot, and could see that it had a brass plaque on it reading "Sydney Water - phone 132 090".

Even then, they were still not convinced that the cabinet was theirs. I had to tell them three times that the plaque had their name and number on it.

I then found another number, which looked like the asset number, and read that to them. At that point, they started to admit that it might belong to Sydney Water. I then read out another plaque stating that it had high voltage inside it - aha! They admitted it was probably feeding a booster pump underground, and in that case, they'd get their contractor onto it.

Finally!

On the positive side, at least they rang me directly as soon as they had a question, rather than just ignoring my report as being "too hard". They also promised to take action as soon as I convinced them that it was their asset.

The only negative I can think of is that without my own photo of the cabinet, I would have been hamstrung.

It just goes to show how "blind" these utilities can be. I would have thought that the answer would be to contact a crew that works in the area and ask them to do a drive-by at their convenience to check it out. If the crew knew the area well, they might say, "Yes, we know that cabinet - and it's not in the system. We've tried several times to get it put into the GIS without result". A bit of internal communication might have eliminated the need to call me at all.

Then again, my experience of these big government utilities is that they are hopeless at talking amongst themselves. Blind as well as mute. If you have something to tell them, get used to the idea of shouting, and shouting repeatedly. It's like trying to tell your deaf old grandmother something.

Have Sydney Water got their poo together?

Sydney Water moves a lot of sewerage, and that movement depends on pumping stations like this one in Concord.  I had a devil of a time getting it cleaned last time it was vandalised - I reported it online on 4 separate occasions, and each time, my report became lost in space - or perhaps clogged in the pipes.  In the end, I had to write to the Managing Director, and she sorted it out quick smart.  Something clogged in the IT channels by the sounds of things.

I'm working on the assumption that they have not gone back to their bad old ways, and my most recent report (number 090503-000027) will produce a quick result this time.

Cleanliness is close to wateriness

Sydney Water emailed me today to say that the vandalised pumping station that I reported on Friday 2 Jan has been cleaned.

Not a bad turn around.  It also shows that their web based reporting system is working properly.

Vandalising our water supply

Sydney Water have an excellent on line contact management system where you can submit problems like this, including photos (I attached both of these to my query, number 090102-000020).  This pumping station, number 72, is in Concord.

Given that the site is locked, I don't know how Energy Australia are going to get a crew in to clean up this kiosk.  This might be a bit of a challenge - getting one authority to talk to another and arrange access.

Last time I lodged a problem like this with Sydney Water, it went walkabout.  I got a very nice letter back from the Managing Director explaining the problem, and the site was quickly cleaned up.  This time, I am putting a reminder in my diary to follow this up again in 3 weeks time to ensure their system is still not losing things.

A tale of seven letters

Over the last month or so, I have recieved 5 responses from a variety of government bodies.  The purpose of this post is to compare and contrast the different responses, and the actions of the various bodies.

I'll start with the good - the RTA.  The RTA keeps it short and simple.  I logged a short request via their website, and got this response a few weeks later via email.  Postage costs of zero, minimal time spent in writing to them, and minimal time and expense for the RTA to respond - as a taxpayer, I like that.  The outcome was also good - the RTA (or their contractors) usually do a good job of painting over graffiti.  They don't always get all of it (missing out a few small bits here and there), but they take care of the great bulk of it.  The difference between before and after is marked.

Ref: GE08/5731

Dear 

I refer to your e-mail regarding the graffiti on the pedestrian bridge over the City West Link,Charles Street, Lillyfield.

The graffiti has now been removed.

Thank you for bringing this matter to the attention of the RTA.

Kind regards

RTA Customer Services

The next response is from Sydney Water.  This was quite unexpected, and it made me smile - letters like this make me feel like I am doing something worthwhile.  I take my hat off to Sydney Water for being so honest and forthright - many government agencies would be tempted to fudge the facts and send back a mealy-mouthed response, but Sydney Water has done the right thing, and my respect for them has gone up enormously.  They've recognised that they had a problem, and they're working on fixing it.  As much as it's nice to get an apology, I care much more that they are looking into their system and seeking to improve it.

Then we have RailCorp.  This letter is just bad.  Consider the following responses:

RailCorp takes the problem of graffiti on the rail corridor seriously and will urgently attend to an incident if it compromises safety or common decency.

That's a lovely motherhood statement, but it has no bearing on the bridge in question.  Safety or common decency is not compromised in this case, so they don't have to do anything about it.  It says nothing about when this bridge will be cleaned - if ever.  

Then there is the next paragraph:

RailCorp shares the responsibility for their maintenance with other stakeholders such as local councils and the RTA.  External bridge walls and roadside surfaces are cleaned by these organisations due to the need to close roads and section off these areas whereas RailCorp attends to areas within the corridor itself.

I know that.  I was a party to the negotiations between RTA and RAC (as it was back then) to divide up responsibility between the two bodies for bridge maintenance.  I had a small part in helping to write the policy on the rail side.  

However, note that all the graffiti in question that I have been writing about is on the bridge itself - it's on the area that is a RailCorp responsibility.  Talking about other stakeholders such as the RTA and local councils simply fudges the issue.  They have no bearing on this case.  It is an exercise in blame shifting or responsibility shifting, and I'm afraid I have written enough of this nonsense in the past to see right through it.  It sounds good, but it means nothing.

As the rail corridor needs to be closed for safety reasons during cleaning, these areas are usually cleaned at the same time as trackwork closedowns.

That much is true.  I have done plenty of work alongside running rail lines in the past to know all about that.  I've done the trackside awareness safety course.  I've worked with the maintenance people who go out and work on the track.  I've worked with the bridge engineers who do the bridge inspections, and even the engineers who wrote the bridge inspection checklists.  I setup the document management system that was used for the writing of a new generation of infrastructure management documentation.

As for closedowns, a project was setup to roll out Primavera as the project management software for planning and running these closedowns.  I know about that, because I built the servers for the pilot and installed Primavera on them and worked with the project team to get it up and running.  In my reply, I asked for the date of the next closedown on this stretch of track, and an assurance that cleaning the bridge was part of the work package.  

I doubt I will get a direct response - in all my letters to RailCorp, I have asked simple and direct questions, and never had a proper answer to any of them.  The RailCorp letter writers are very good at obscuring the issues and avoiding the questions whilst appearing to give an answer of substance.

For some unfathomable reason, someone at RailCorp just doesn't want to remove the graffiti from this bridge.  It might be an issue of cost, or the difficulty and complexity of arranging a closedown to do the work, or that they have higher priority things to do.  It might also be that due to the lack of rail traffic on this line, they are treating it as a "dead" line and don't want to spend a cent on it if they can help it.  Whatever the reason, RailCorp are not being honest and upfront about their reasons.

The fourth letter is from Australia Post.  I find this letter slightly disturbing - the implication is that if I continue to ask for graffiti to be removed from post-boxes, they'll start removing them because they are too expensive to clean.  You might read that as a veiled threat to shut up and stop contacting them, or I'll be responsible for the removal of the postal service from some areas.

As far as I am concerned, if a post-box is not used, they are free to take it out.  No sense in retaining uneconomic assets if they are not required. With a network of 14,000 post-boxes, I'd think they'd be removing hundreds each year (and also installing hundreds in new suburbs as they spring up).  

That said, I can't see how cleaning them can be so unbelievably expensive that it would warrant their removal on economic grounds.  I can buy 1 litre of metho from my local supermarket for under $4.  Having cleaned graffiti off a few signs in our area, I estimate that a 1 litre bottle should be enough to clean 100 post-box sides (if it was vandalised on four sides, one bottle would do 25 post-boxes etc).  That works out at under 4 cents per side.  You could throw in the cost of a rag if need be.  The labour cost is not that high, given that I have found that I can remove a large tag from a street sign in about 10 seconds.  

If they are using diamond encrusted rags with gold-infused metho, I could understand that it might cost a few dollars to clean up a post-box.  Otherwise, I find this talk of the "significant cost" in cleaning post-boxes to be insulting.  If the management of Australia Post can't find a cheap way to clean graffiti from post-boxes, then maybe we need to replace some managers with more competent managers.

This letter also says that Australia Post will "continue to undertake both scheduled and ad hoc cleaning of our facilities", but I have seen no evidence to date that Australia Post has a system in place to ensure that scheduled cleaning is undertaken.  
The fifth letter is from Ashfield Council.  I like this letter.  The GM has acknowledged that they have a problem, that they want to do something about it and that they are striving to do better in future.  I've noticed that since my first letter, the response of Ashfield Council has improved, so this letter is not a lot of fluff and hot air - it is the genuine article.

RailCorp and Australia Post could learn a lot from Ashfield Council, the RTA and Sydney Water, which is why I have posted all the responses here.  Clearly, some organisations are better led, and their staff more committed, than others.

That's five letters - where are the other two?

I have written to Telstra on a number of occasions, and never had a response from anyone.  I've also written to Energy Australia a few times, and whilst the first few letters generated a response, I've heard nothing from them in months.  I guess they think that if they ignore me, I'll forget about them and go away.

Unfortunately for Energy Australia, since they are a government corporation, they are responsible to a Minister - and I'll be writing to that Minister today to ask them to chase up a response on my behalf.  

Displaying a small amount of energy

Energy Australia (or their infrastructure arm, Eneserve) are making some inroads into painting the 15 or so green "kiosks" that I've reported over the last few weeks.  This is one of them.

This one is just around the corner, and it's still waiting to be done - or it's been done and hit again.  The inexplicable thing is that there is another kiosk about 50m from the one in the above photo, and although I have not reported it, they've left it covered in graffiti.  You really have to wonder about the mentality of people that turn up to remove graffiti, drive straight past another example of it and just ignore it.  

There might be a number of reasons for this.

They could be half-blind.

They might be on very strict instructions from management to only do the work on their work orders, and not to deviate under any circumstances to paint any other kiosks (for safety reasons or whatever).

They're using contractors, and the contractors will only paint those items that are on their work order.  (If I was a contractor though, engaged to paint vandalised kiosks, I'd be reporting every one that I saw in order to generate a bit more work).

I would have thought by now that a manager at Energy Australia would have looked at the stats coming through and thought, "Gee, we seem to have a problem with vandalised kiosks in this area.  Maybe I'll look into it and see if there are any that have been missed".  In other words, taking a systematic look at the problem.  These people should be trained to systematically look at safety hazards - you don't want the same problem to kill people on a repeat basis.  If they applied the same ideas to analysing graffiti, we might have these kiosks cleaned up much more quickly, and without the need for me to continually report them.

The next photos are of a Sydney Water pumping facility of some sort in Concord - it was finally cleaned up this week.  My fifth and final contact with them seems to have done the trick.  Instead of reporting it via their web site (again), I wrote to the Managing Director (letter below).

Whoever has done the job this time has bothered to replace the safety warning stickers on this equipment cabinet - good.

This photo provides a bit of context - that road on the right is Concord Rd, and it's a busy road that's 3 lanes in each directions.  It's not like this pumping station is hidden out of the way - it's right next to a busy road that is passed by tens of thousands of people each day.  It should not have been that hard to find.

It looks like the RTA has also come along and painted over some graffiti on the base of this pole.

Dr Kerry Schott

Managing Director

Sydney Water

PO Box 53

Sydney South NSW 1235

16 October 2008

  

Dear Dr Schott 

Removal of graffiti from pumping station 94 in Concord 

Since July this year, I have contacted Sydney Water on four separate occasions requesting that graffiti be removed from pumping station number 94 on Concord Road.  I have taken photographs of the pumping station every time I have been in the area, and posted them online.  Some of them are available at: 

http://tinyurl.com/4ln4bm 

The reference number for my original report filed on 18 July is 080718-000104.  I logged further requests on or around 10 August, 27 August and 25 September because the earlier reports were closed without any action being taken. 

Since July, the public toilets adjacent to your pumping station have been vandalised to a similar extent, yet Canada Bay Council managed to have a crew on site within a few days, and to have their asset cleaned within an hour.  

To say the least, I am less than impressed with the response of Sydney Water to date, which is why I am writing to you directly.  

Please arrange to have the graffiti removed from pumping station 94. 

Yours sincerely

-----------------

If all else fails, hit the person at the top.  I hope Dr Schott is absolutely mortified at the lackadaisical response from her organisation.

Six wins and one fail

A good day today (although not all this was fixed this week).  I reported this playground a month or two ago - it was quickly cleaned by Council, and has remained in that state ever since.  It shows that vandalism can sometimes be a random or one off event, rather than a steady stream of attacks.  In this case, the park has been cleaned up, and has been graffiti-free since.  It shows that it is worth removing graffiti, because then residents can enjoy (in this instance) a graffiti-free park for months on end.

Five Dock Park - a crew went through today and painted over the graffiti on all the park furniture.  All the benches had a "wet paint" sign like this one on them.

Sydney Water have replaced the corroded vent pipe with a brand new, green pipe.  It blended in so well, I walked straight past it before thinking about going back and looking for it.

Graffiti has been removed from the side of the Early Childhood Centre.

The gate to this playground has been repaired - and I completely forgot about reporting it.  Either someone is reading this blog, or a sharp-eyed Council employee has noticed it and fixed it.

The Council graffiti crew in action again around the grandstand in Five Dock Park.  After the mess that was made the previous weekend, I presume Council management thought that it would be a good idea to have staff back in the park on the first day after the weekend to see if any damage needed attending to.  Now that's the forward thinking, proactive stuff that Australia Post should be thinking about.

The one fail was on Crane St, near Concord High School.  On the weekend, the concrete barriers dividing Crane St were repainted and clean.  Today, they had already been hit with a few tags.  Council are just going to have to paint and paint and paint those barriers until the little sods give up and find something better to do - like train surfing.

Sydney Water - resisting success

Here is a brief history of my saga with this pumping station.

• 18 July - contacted Sydney Water
• 10 August - contacted them again
• 27 August - contacted them again
• 25 September - tried again

These photos were taken today, nearly 3 months after my initial report, and nothing has been done.  Nothing.  Time to write to the CEO to let her know what is going on.  

Under the Western Motorway

Unbeknownst to many, there is a path under the Western Motorway that goes all the way to Parramatta.  I haven't been down that way for some months, but last time I went, most of the journey was graffiti free.

No longer.  Almost every support column for the motorway has been defaced with numerous tags, and there are a lot of columns.

The amount of rubbish along the way is amazing - absolutely stupendous.  It's mile after mile of litter, litter, litter.  

There are a lot of large warehouse-style buildings along the way, and most have been vandalised.

The canal or storm water drain is a sea of spray paint.  It seems that when you hit Auburn, the spray paint starts in earnest.  East of Auburn, most graffiti is done with marker pens.  West of Auburn, it's mainly paint.  And lots of paint.  Lots and lots and lots.

I wondered why I missed the turn-off to Parramatta - half the sign was missing.

Where is a good spot to start cleaning this graffiti?  At the RTA motorcycle rider training centre in Auburn.

I'll have to report all this on Monday.

Five Dock Park

Poor old Five Dock Park really takes a beating.  I wrote to Council last and asked if they have established a "friends of the park" group yet for this park.  (It's part of the Council playground strategy to setup a "friends" program.  This park really needs one.

The Early Childhood centre had graffiti removed from this spot recently, and it has returned once more.  It's like mould in the bathroom - very hard to keep under control.

There are plenty of benches throughout the park, and some of them look like this.  (By the way, that red circle in the top right corner is a vandalised Energy Australia substation, mentioned in the next blog).

Another vandalised bench.  Note that most of the graffiti has been applied with a marker pen, rather than spray paint.  This is why I don't believe that banning spray paint will have much effect.  If you ask me, marker pens are the precursor to moving onto spray paint.  Young kids (12 and up) can easily buy a marker pen from a newsagency and start a life of vandalism, before graduating some years later to spray paint.  

A very rusted ventilation pipe.  I reported this to Sydney Water last month, and haven't seen any action yet.

The bottom of the ventilation pipe is almost non-existant.  If it wasn't for the supporting struts, this would have toppled long ago.

Many of the lamp posts have been defaced, again with a marker pen rather than spray paint.  Note that vandals prefer a marker pen with a fat nib - perhaps an Artline 100 or 130 series.  In my humble opinion, I'd start by banning fat marker pens.

Someone has trashed this rubbish bin.

Some good news though - this sign has been thoroughly cleaned by Council.  The Council anti-graffiti team seems to be the most thorough when it comes to removing graffiti - they really do a good job.  The RTA on the other hand tend to do a really sloppy, slap-dash job when it comes to cleaning signage.  

The gate to the playground has been broken - again.  I'll have to include that in my report to Council on Monday.  This is the second time that this has been snapped off.  I doubt that a small child did this - by the look of the rest of the park, it appears that some teenagers have had a wild time here recently, trashing trees and bins and breaking anything they can.  

When I went to the playground this morning, there were a number of other families there, playing with their kids.  All the adults had noticed this damage - but why, as usual, am I the only one to report it?

I really must remember to get some flyers printed and start handing them out to parents when I see things like this.

Reporting a stink

I finally got around to reporting this rusty old thing to Sydney Water today - it's only a month since I took the photos.

In this case, I was put through to Spotless Maintenance, and the bloke I spoke to scratched his head a bit because this vent pipe is not listed in his system as a current asset.  It might be in this condition because it was taken out of production years ago, and everyone has forgotten about it.  He eventually managed to log a job against it, and we'll see what the crew says about it when they pay it a visit.  It was a bit hard to explain the location, since it is 100 metres into a big park.  

The good news is that the bloke taking the call was very helpful and friendly, and really went out of his way to take care of a pretty unusual problem.

Sydney Water fails to act

I've tried twice now to get Sydney Water to clean this building in Concord.  Both attempts have been made via their website.  Next step is to write a letter to their CEO.  

Instead of writing to the CEO, I rang their contact number (13 20 90), and was put through to Spotless Maintenance.  After talking to them for a few minutes, it became clear it was not their problem, and I had to ring a Sydney Water security number - 1800 010 085.  I'm not sure why graffiti is lumped in with security, but they took the call and logged it and promised to get it cleaned up.

Now I was called a moron last month because I logged a job with Energy Australia and gave them the asset number rather than the street address.

But in this case, the first thing Sydney Water asked me for was the asset number!  The street address was no good.  Luckily, one of my photos showed a sign that said SPS 94 (which I think stands for Sewerage Pumping Station number 94), and the person taking the call was able to work out that it was in fact asset SP 094.  She spent a few minutes doing queries on their ERP or GIS system and eventually tracked down the location of the station and logged a job appropriately.  

So it can be very useful to try and find an asset number when reporting these things.

The drain is just for rain

These photos show just how much rubbish ends up in the drains around here.  This canal, or drain, runs along the boundary of Haberfield, and it's always full of junk that has been washed into it from further upstream.  If it were not for traps like this, The Bay would be covered in a slick of rubbish from shore to shore.

The recent rains saw a higher level of water in the drains than normal, and all sorts of junk that would normally wash down into the trap has instead been caught on the sides of the canal as the water level has fallen.

There are possibly a hundred discarded drink bottles, spraypaint cans, oil bottles and so on washed up on the canal wall on the right in this photo.  Because of the way the canal is fenced, the only way to collect them would be to paddle up the canal in a kayak with a long grabby thing on a stick and then pick up the bottles one by one.

The alternative is to leave them here until the next storm, in the hope that the water will again rise to a level where they will be washed into the trap.

I counted half a dozen empty spray paint cans when I was taking these photos, and I am sure there were more.  Vandals like to spray the sides of the canal further upstream, and they are not too picky about how they dispose of their cans once they are empty.

These people are not "artists" - they are destructive grubs, pure and simple.  

Cleaned with a bit too much vim and vigour

These three photos show a Sydney Water cabinet that was cleaned up about a month ago.  There's just one problem - whoever did the cleaning has scrubbed off all the identifying information on this cabinet.  If you look really, really carefully at the signage in this photo, you can just make out that it belongs to Sydney Water.

From Sydney Water