PEOPLE have resorted to cut up towels and sheets as they run out of toilet paper, causing blockages in Perth’s sewerage system.

That’s put a strain on Water Corporation’s maintenance teams, as the Herald discovered this week while investigating why several leaking water mains in the area had remained untreated for long stretches.

One of the under-the-pump maintenance workers said he’d just come back from an outer suburbs to deal with another blockage of towels and sheets – as well as innumerable cotton wipes.

But he did have a light side to the issue; he said Water Corporation teams had been given boxes of toilet paper with instructions to hand out two rolls to affected homeowners so they’d stop taking to their luxury Sheridans with the scissors.

He reckons he got dirty looks from neighbours while unloading a very large box of toilet paper at the end of the day and had to hastily assure them he hadn’t joined the city’s legion of hoarders.

by STEVE GRANT