A WIDOWED pensioner has been left stranded in his home by “torrents” of raw sewage flood that his garden during heavy rain.
Pat Perkins, 81, has to put wellies on to wade through up to four inches of human waste that has spewed out five times in the past few months.
Tides of excrement cascade from a manhole cover and are feared to have contaminated the land at the council home in Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire, where Pat has lived for more than 50 years.
On Friday, workers from Severn Trent spent nine hours cleaning sewage from the great-grandfather’s garden, collecting 26 bags of human waste, he said.
Pat and his family are furious with the water giants – whose CEO Liv Garfield has earned £17.3million since 2014 – for not fixing the problem and say they “don’t seem to care”.
Pat says the sewage is affecting his mental health and his grandchildren now can’t visit him, with a swamp of filth “running around” his house .
The retired lorry driver told The Sun Online: “I am on my own. I lost my wife two-and-a-half years ago after 60 years.
“In the week it is bad when you have got nobody on your own. This keeps going on and you can’t do anything.
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“I can’t have my grandchildren, I can’t have the dog in the garden or anything. I’m virtually stuck here in the house. It gets you down. It’s ridiculous.
“With losing the wife as well, I wish I was with her sometimes the way this goes on.”
Pat put concrete blocks on the manhole cover in a desperate bid to stem the tidal wave of foul-smelling waste being pumped out, but pressure from the flooded drains pushes it off.
During one downpour, a pair of women’s knickers was expelled from the sewers into his garden.
Pat and his family say the flooding has got worse since a housing estate was built nearby and they have lashed out at Severn Trent.
I can’t have my grandchildren, I can’t have the dog in the garden or anything. I’m virtually stuck here in the house. It gets you down. It’s ridiculous
Last week, they say they waited 24 hours for workers from the water giant to clear the mess, with excrement left soaked into the garden for three days until a final clean.
Engineers have tried to put a camera into the sewers to check for blockages, but the flood water was too powerful.
The family also criticised housing association Orbit for not doing more to tackle the problem, and say the stench of the sewage is "horrendous".
Pat said: “I like to get out and do things around the garden and keep my mind occupied but it is getting worse instead of better. It affects your mental health.
“By my caravan there was four inches of raw sewage. On Friday when the first gang came they spent from nine o'clock to four o'clock cleaning it up and they got 26 bags of raw sewage.
“Another gang came on Sunday and they had a hosepipe and had to wash all the grass down. The ground is contaminated and it is getting worse.
“I put concrete blocks on it to try and hold it down but the force of it coming up you can’t.
“Nobody can come to me. The oldest grandchild, she used to come on a Wednesday night or Thursday night and stay with me until Friday.
“But I said, ‘I daren’t take a chance with you. With sewage you never know what you are going to pick up’.
“I like to see them. They make my week at the weekend, but I told them you had better not come as I don’t want to see anything happen to them."
He said he has received a letter with £75 from Severn Trent, but they said they were not responsible for the flooding.
Pat's son Shaune Perkins, 58, said his wife phoned the firm on Thursday at 8am and they said they would be out within two hours, but engineers didn't arrive until Friday.
'DISGUSTING'
Shaune said: "They finally came back again on Sunday for the final clean up. Three days. The only way he could get out of his front door was to put his wellies on.
“He is a widower. He gets very lonely .His only joy really is his grandchildren going around. He has my dog every day, which is his only companion.
“But at the moment he can’t because the garden is disgusting,
“Even though they have now cleared it up a lot of it is still soaking into the ground and contaminating it.
“There is excrement all over the garden, it is all under his caravan. It was everywhere.
There is excrement all over the garden, it is all under his caravan. There was even a pair of lady’s knickers that had come through.
"There was even a pair of lady’s knickers that had come through and washed into the garden as well.
“It is disgusting. It covers about 80 percent of the garden. Then it goes down the drive, across the pavement and down the road.
“Schoolchildren are walking through this when they go home from school. It is literally running around his house."
A Severn Trent spokesman told Sun Online they were visiting Pat's home again yesterday "with a view of starting some immediate work" today.
A spokesman added: "We’re sorry for the time taken to visit the property when reported.
"Flooding reports are prioritised so teams could attend internal floods first as a priority, which meant it took a longer than hoped to attend any external flooding due to a number of reports following heavy rain.
"We know how distressing flooding can be, especially sewer flooding, and would like to apologise to any of our customers impacted by the issues in Shipston.
"We want to reassure everyone that we’re investigating the cause of the problem and are working to resolve it as quickly as possible and we’ve spoken to and updated the customer today with our plans.
"We’re already carrying out some immediate work on the affected sewer pipe as a priority, which includes visiting the property today to use CCTV to check the pipe, with a view of work starting tomorrow.
"We’ll then investigate our network further to understand if there’s any other issues, as well as use CCTV cameras and specialist equipment on the wider network to fully understand what’s happening that could be contributing to the problem.
“Again, we are extremely sorry for the disruption this has caused; it remains an absolute priority for us to get the issue resolved as quickly as possible.”
A spokesman for Orbit said: "Our contractors are attending the property at Queens Avenue on December 15, 2021 to undertake a drain camera survey and investigate our customer’s recent report of flooding.
"Prior to this, we received a report of a blocked drain in April 2020. This was investigated by contractors, but no issues were found, and no further
issues were raised by the customer.”
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