Having just spent up to $60 million on flood levees and another lot of money on the Margaret Street pump station the city still can't stop sewage spilling on to our street in times of heavy rainfall, because it is a combined stormwater sewerage treatment process.

This peculiar system combines sewage and stormwater when the treatment outfalls are overwhelmed. Swell. The combined system is supposed to prevent sewage spilling on to our streets but it failed at the weekend.

This is a health nightmare. Taswater and the Launceston City Council can explain this any way they like, but the bottom line is, when it pours we are at risk of sewage contamination because we have a system that is either too expensive or too complex to fix. It's like the good old days of the night cart.

If this happens during summer, the health ramifications are alarming. What does a business do when the damage is more than excess stormwater, soiling the carpets and structure?

It is up to the councils to ensure that TasWater has the capacity to at least improve basic hygiene. Councils were relieved of quite a financial burden when they devolved water and sewerage functions to TasWater.

They collectively own TasWater and plunder its profits each year for dividends - $30 million in the past year, even after revenue from rates, fees and federal grants. Then they sit back, while the population suffers either poor boiled-water quality in regional councils or raw sewage overflows in 21st century cities.

If you were one of those wealthy Chinese tourists trying to admire the cascading Gorge from King Street Bridge, the local stories of raw sewage would tend to spoil and soil the clean-green image somewhat.