The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Residents whose basements have been mysteriously filling with sewage during heavy rainfall are demanding answers from City Hall. For the past two years, massive rains have caused sewer back-ups at numerous homes at Aspen Grove and the nearby south block of Parkway Boulevard, as well as the South Hudson Street area. 'We were going to sell our house and move,' said Doug Rowe, a Parkway Boulevard homeowner, frustrated following the latest backup. Rowe's basement was covered with two inches of sewage the morning of June 24, when exceptionally hefty rains pounded the Flin Flon area. He wasn't alone. That same rainfall had 17 people, all or most of them backup victims, appearing before city council on Tuesday. Mayor George Fontaine said he does not know what is behind the problem, but the city has engineers working to devise solutions. 'We're serious about that,' he said. In the short term, Coun. Bill Hanson said, city staff have identified 'adjustments' at a water lift station that have a 'strong potential' to reduce the risk of backups. See 'City' on pg. Continued from pg. That lift station, near Aspen Grove, will be decommissioned later this year when its functions are replaced by the new water treatment plant. It is unknown what impact, if any, that will have on the backups. In the longer term, Coun. Hanson said the city will seek technical advice in 'exploring the feasibility of other potential solutions or improvements, including diversion pipes, pipe capacity changes, pumping options and potential regulatory action.' If heavy rains fall before corrective measures can be taken, Mayor Fontaine said, all the city can do is deploy pump trucks to draw excess sewage out of the system in affected neighbourhoods. The city did have pump trucks at the Aspen-Parkway area to try and keep basements from backing up during the latest rains, but it wasn't enough. Coun. Hanson said the pumping was done 'in as timely a fashion as conditions allowed,' but Janice Rowe, Doug's wife, countered that 'it isn't happening in a timely fashion.' For much of Tuesday's meeting, Mayor Fontaine doubled as a venting board as agitated residents shared the impact of the most recent backups. One man said he had just invested more than $30,000 to finish his basement 'and it all went out the window' even though he had a check valve meant to prevent backups. Janice Rowe spoke of sewage rising two or three feet on her street as it emerged from manholes. 'Children have been walking to school and playing in this contaminant excrement, and we were living in it and it's unacceptable,' she said. There were also accounts of insurance companies preparing to deny coverage because of repeated backups, and of health concerns stemming from living around raw sewage. Bev Bassham was not at Tuesday's council meeting, but the Aspen Grove apartment tenant had unpleasant stories of her own. When she woke up the morning after the latest heavy rains, Bassham said she found a foot of watery sewage in her basement. She said the backup ruined her deep freeze, all of her summer clothes and many valuable mementoes such as her grandson's crib bedding and her son's childhood toys. Blames city Bassham said Manitoba Housing, which operates the apartments, has done all it can to prevent the backups, so she blames to the city. 'I think everybody who was flooded, whether they had insurance or not, should be reimbursed by the city,' said Bassham, who is on social assistance. While the city cannot definitively say what is causing the backups, Tuesday's council meeting was full of speculation. Janice Rowe said her understanding is that the city once utilized an overflow pipe that discharged excess sewage into Ross Creek, but that the pipe is no longer in use. Coun. Hanson said the pipe violates government regulations and, according to what he was told, is now plugged with concrete. If it were an option, Mayor Fontaine said he would be willing to use an overflow pipe to save people's basements and simply pay the applicable government fine. Bassham said the city told her that the problem rests with residents whose sump pumps illegally discharge into the sewer system rather than outside their homes. Mayor Fontaine held out the possibility of those people being fined, but Janice Rowe said those sump pumps were in use long before backups became an issue in 2011. The mayor said the backup problem is being taken seriously but 'you can't solve this in a day.' 'We need to have a chance for our people to study what's happening and to make whatever changes are feasible and affordable, I hope, so this isn't happening,' he said.
