Water Authority of Fiji CEO Seru Soderberg is urging people to not throw things such as dye and chemicals into the wastewater network as it can harm the environment and be costly.
Soderberg has highlighted this after confirming after testing that the blue colour observed following the overflowing culvert in Nabua in the beginning of the year was dye.
He says the incident was caused by dye being discharged into the network at the same time the main Nabua pump station tripped and overflowed, which the team rectified immediately as it services wastewater from the entire CBD.
The CEO says they continuously go through the challenges of finding people dumping things such as cones, shoes, rags, blankets, all manner of things into the wastewater network.
He says it either gets discharged into the environment, causing environmental damage, or it damages the infrastructure itself.
Soderberg says when that happens, the cost is no longer borne by WAF but by taxpayers who have to pay for the repairs and the cost of repairs escalates on a yearly basis.