Letter to the Editor: Has the City has failed to do all they can?

Am I the only one that questions if the DNR agrees with the City’s plan of requiring backflow preventers (valves) to fix illegal stormwater inflow into the sanitary sewer? I know recently Jerry Chandler basically stated the city was barking up the wrong tree in using backflow preventers as a fix. He is correct.

Stopping sewer water from backing up into homes does not fix the need to prevent excess rain water from going to the waste treatment plant that the DNR frowns upon, especially when it backs up into homes as sanitary sewer water. The taxpayers are paying to treat the rainwater needlessly at the wastewater treatment plant.

Some years back I questioned why there are no storm sewers on our street and surrounding streets in the Berg area. At the time Mayor Hansen confirmed the lack of the stormwater sewers on our street. Then things started to make sense after one of the original homeowners that lived in our area told me he had his footing tiled into the sanitary sewer line when he had the home constructed. I had sump pumps lines running out of the house, he did not. Not only did I get to pay for his and everyone else’s storm water to be treated, but I got to buy sump pumps and pay electrical bills too. What was the gentleman in the neighborhood out besides no water in the basement since there was no sump pumps to fail, no electric bills to pay to run them, no sump pumps to buy, insurance claims with deductibles to pay when the pump failed, etc.. He was the smart one at the time. Of course in the early days there were no codes that restricted tying footing lines in with the sanitary sewer lines, so I bet many in town were likely built that way. Without the storm sewers, people had to have somewhere to get rid of the water that would otherwise seep into the basement.

Point blank, the City has failed to do all they can. They can and should smoke test “all” areas in town to look for illicit connections. Why the city just unfairly went after a few sections of town in enforcing the I&I law is beyond me. All of the sanitary water that contains the rain water in question all eventually heads to the same waste treatment area and will only back up into homes if the sewer water is backed up and headed the wrong direction. Backflow preventers just mask the symptoms from any backup of water and do not cure the Infiltration and Inflow problem.

I&I - “Infiltration & Inflow” - which is defined as the invasion of storm water into the sanitary sewer system from broken, cracked misaligned mains, leaking manholes or manholes that have water flowing over their covers, plus private (resident and business) services that are cracked or broken and storm water connections from foundation/footing drains, sump pits and roof drains into sanitary sewers. Believe it or not, here in Newton they stated rainwater seeping into a basement and running across the floor into a sanitary sewer drain was also considered illegal.

Todd Hackathorn

Newton