A York woman suffered a gash to her head after slipping on mud left behind when a water mains burst more than four weeks ago.
An urgent clean-up was underway today after a councillor intervened to say to both City of York Council and Yorkshire Water: “It’s just not good enough”.
The woman was walking her dog in the garden area behind Balfour Street on Tuesday when the incident happened.
Sharing what happened in a Facebook group, she said: “I slipped on mud that has been left behind from the burst water mains that has never been cleaned up.”
She banged her head on the concrete, suffering a big cut which had to be glued together in A&E. She also suffered with concussion and had to take unpaid time off work.
It was back on Sunday 19 July when a water main ruptured at the corner of Salisbury Terrace and Balfour Street, flooding nearby streets.
Because it was a such a major breach it took some time to fix. But neither the council nor Yorkshire Water washed away the muddy residue around the park.
Yesterday, Holgate ward councillor Kallum Taylor wrote a strongly-worded email to both organisations saying an immediate clean-up was required.
When YorkMix visited the park today, a team from City of York Council was washing down the ginnel next to the park.
Cllr Taylor told us: “Following the burst pipe incident Yorkshire Water and the council worked well to quickly sort out a replacement bus, rearrange bin collections, and re-open the road quickly.
“But the approach to cleaning up all of the affected area has been unclear, patchy, and far too slow.
“It is such a basic ask for a residential area to be made safe and clean after flooding – yet both organisations have a way of making it feel like it’s asking the Earth.
“Now we’ve had a bit of rain, people have inevitably slipped over the sludge that remains many weeks after the event, and in some cases been badly hurt.
“They often publicly talk about partnership working but privately there’s an obvious lack of ownership, poor communication, and disagreement over who’s responsible for what – while in the meantime, residents have paid the price.”
We’ve asked both City of York Council and Yorkshire Water for a response