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Older homes hamper sanitary system
About 15,000 have improper connections
BOARDMAN
The substance churning through the Boardman sewage treatment plant Aug. 10 rushed with the force and volume of a waterfall. Unless everyone in the Boardman area flushed their toilets at the same time, however, this should never be the case.
Mahoning County has a closed sewer system, meaning that storm water flows through one set of pipes, and sewage flows through another. Therefore, rain events should not affect the treatment of sewage.
But due to an aspect of mid-20th-century home construction, treatment plants in Mahoning County are inundated when it rains.
Homeowners bear the brunt of the issue when this increased volume and pressure floods basements with untreated sewage.
Homes built between roughly 1950 and 1970 were constructed so that gutters, downspouts and footers drain into the sanitary sewer line.
“I would say most homes north of [U.S. Route] 224 have this issue, and there will be spots of homes south,” said Jason Loree, Boardman Township administrator.
Mahoning County Sanitary Engineer Pat Ginnetti listed further contributing factors: “If they don’t have a sump pump. ... If your downspouts aren’t running into your grass.”
The Clean Water Act of 1972 made these connections illegal, but because the regulation is unfunded and lacks an enforcement mechanism, this problem persists.
Mahoning County Sanitary Engineering Department estimates that of its 40,000 customers, about 15,000 are homes with improper connections to the sanitary system.
The only thing addressing this problem is a program the sanitary engineering department offers to install gate valves.
The back-flow program offers 50 percent reimbursement for the installation of a gate valve/sump pump combination up to a maximum of $2,500.
Although it was instituted in 1994, the program has helped pay for only 594 gate valves.
The key to the program’s lack of popularity likely lies in its lone requirement: removal of footer drains from the sanitary sewer. Disconnecting can be costly, especially with older homes.
“I don’t think we can quantify a typical cost, because every situation is different. ... Once you expose something old, you may run into a lot of unforeseen circumstances,” Ginnetti said.
John Dorunda, who has lived on Holbrooke Road for more than 60 years, currently faces this dilemma. “I could never afford to have something done with the footers. It would be in the tens of thousands. It would be cheaper to move,” said Dorunda.
Cost isn’t the program’s only obstacle. It’s also not very well-publicized.
“This is about the only time you see” information about the program, Loree said as he held up the sanitary engineering department’s annual summer newsletter.
He offered as a counter-example the outreach work done by the Mahoning County Soil and Water Conservation District, which recently instituted a billboard campaign to teach about storm-water runoff.
The campaign conveys to consumers that their actions affect the water they drink.
For example, one shows a man fertilizing his lawn juxtaposed over a body of water. It reads: “When you’re fertilizing the lawn, remember, you’re not just fertilizing the lawn.”
“Everything is connected. It behooves us to educate on what people can do to be good stewards. People don’t know until it affects them,” said Kathi Vrable-Bryan, district administrator at SWCD.
The back-flow program’s flaws make clear that the problem of sewer infiltration can’t be solved by the sanitary engineering department alone.
“We don’t want to create hardships for people. We’re an operations and maintenance department. [A manageable solution] would require the efforts of various county departments to work together,” Ginnetti said.
Bill Coleman, sanitary engineering’s office manager, and Ginnetti said this collaboration must start with customers.
“We can help you, property owner, but we have to make this a partnership. Some people look at us as their adversary. That’s certainly not our goal here. There’s all this stuff we’re doing on the macro side. Then the people have to go to the micro side and say, ‘OK what can I do?’” Coleman said.