Sunday, June 21, 2009

Sewer inflow and infiltration to finally be addressed

Some of you may recall the inflow and infiltration (InI) sewer problem that began rearing its ugly head in May '05. Fast forward only four years and you begin to see some likely tangible improvements...

Reported by the NHRs Luther Turmelle:

A $583,000 project designed to reduce the amount of storm water that flows into the town sanitary sewer system is scheduled to begin next month.

The sad part to me is that as a non-engineer volunteer, I saw a clear indication of the InI problem in July 2007.

As far as I'm concerned, when it starts to pour and the sewer plant usage increases dramatically within minutes, even a cretin would know that water was pouring directly into the sewer pipes. But this is Cheshire!

And while the Wastewater Superintendent probably knew what was happening... and while the Council-appointed Water Pollution Control Authority would've understood his explanation... those two don't necessarily communicate.

You can thank your brilliant Town Council for ensuring the Town's organizational chart is filled with people who have been able to somehow manage to waste four years before they addressed the main issue - water pouring directly into the sewer lines.

Remember the household inspections for sump pumps? Yeah... thank the Council for that one... not much more than a waste of time. Relevant? Sure, but it didn't address the main issue.

I'm so glad there's an election nearing. This Town needs a real house cleaning. Far too much incompetence at the top levels of government - starting with the current Council majority.

Tim White

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

We were told for many months that numerous bad citizens amongst us were illegally discharging storm water runoff into the town sewers. Therefore it was time to enter their private homes and search them for illegal pumping systems!

In the end things have quieted down too much on this topic now that it has become clear that actions - - or lack of actions - - by elected and paid town officials over a period of years were the root cause of the problem all along. It is hard to believe anyone was enforcing codes and standards upon those who constructed and operated the sewer piping system which leaks. A one shot fix this time won't fix it either since with time and lack of adequate maintenance equipment always degrades and fails again.

Listening to this unfold should be enough to cause town voters to head to the polls and vote for changes in town government at the next election.

tim white said...

I just hope we don't have five new people (D, R or other) who then say "now that we're in charge, everything is fine!"

I'm tired of the incompetence and arrogance that currently runs Cheshire.

Anonymous said...

I had 2 houses with drain pipes gpoing into the sewers...I called the town so I could be home when the inspectors came around....I called them twice because they never followed up with me....they neve did follow up....i fixed one myself then said the heck with the other one....I had no where for the water to go....

Anonymous said...

Arrogance in all aspects of the town's government needs to be eliminated before residents begin to see change that we can afford. For too long all we see is increasing tax bills while services at best remain constant and often seem to degrade with time.

One has only to listen to the likes of the council chair, the school super, the teacher's union chair, and the town manager to begin to see how high up arrogance is tolerated in this community.

For starters how about a ban on the wearing of suits, ties, and formal dress by elected officials and town employees at all televised town meetings? We could still try to pick out our leaders in the council chambers ONLY by their actions instead of their formal clothing.

Anonymous said...

Suits? Who the heck can afford them? Have you seen the prices of suits lately? Remember when you got TWO pairs of pants with the purchase of a suit???

Anonymous said...

It's hard to believe that as few as 150 manhole covers would let in the quantity of water that is causing all the trouble.

Is this really a fix or is it something to hang out on the campaign mission accomplished board?

Anonymous said...

It all depends what SIZE the pants are. The political class in this town needs a lot of material.

Anonymous said...

They stopped checking because the town had no legal autority to enter any home to perform a search without cause. Once a certificate of occupancy is issued, the town forgoes any ability to inspect the interior unless it is visable from a public right-of-way. This was not a case of the town leaders not following through with the inspection but a possible civil violation that would have cost the town millions in unconstitutional search and seizure lawsuits.

Anonymous said...

They stopped checking because the town had no legal autority to enter any home to perform a search without cause. Once a certificate of occupancy is issued, the town forgoes any ability to inspect the interior unless it is visable from a public right-of-way. This was not a case of the town leaders not following through with the inspection but a possible civil violation that would have cost the town millions in unconstitutional search and seizure lawsuits.

Anonymous said...

"...This was not a case of . . . a possible civil violation . . . in unconstitutional search and seizure lawsuits.. .

Dah, how about the town laying off the fancy pants lawyerisms for a bit and maybe getting some greasy mechanic type person to run a bore scope down the sewer pipes in front of the suspected illegal storm water dumper's house to visually get the evidence needed to get a search warrant to go after whoever it is/was who is dumping millions of gallons of storm water from their tiny little town lot?

Better yet, maybe we could equip our police with such equipment as an adjunct to that fancy gas guzzling pick up truck piloted by a town police officer who goes out on special sign patrol work replacing street signs etc. while DPW trucks sit idle?

Oh the attitude exhibited by some politicians and town workers around these parts. Thankfully there are still elections in November.

Anonymous said...

And what will your first reaction be when a little camera owned by the town pops out of your toilet and hits you in the ass? LAWSUIT!!!

Are you aware of what the police pickup truck is? It is a F-150 with a 4.6 liter motor. It uses less gas than the regular cruisers. Street signs are the responsibility of the public works and speed limit, stop, and various warning signs are the responsability of the police dept. With all these unions that are costing us money, they will file a grievence if someone else does their job.

Hopefully the people in Tims district will realize he does nothing for them come Nov.

Anonymous said...

"...And what will your first reaction be when a little camera owned by the town pops out of your toilet ...

Cute but not too bright. I'm sure town employees and town contractors wouldn't want to be involved in such stupidity even if you could imagine it. Catching someone breaking local, state, a federal storm water discharging regulations, now that is a different but real issue.

It is quite questionable as to why we have highly paid police officers playing with nuts and bolts, sign posts and signs. One can only wonder in reality if any police officer let alone a town officer is in fact truly qualified to be working directly on such important basic town devices as signs anyway.

Worrying about law suits. Here's a thought, a sign installed by a police officer trained to be a police officer causes in some fashion some physical injury.
Bet that could be a valid basis for a law suit. Just ask the next of kin of that poor fellow killed by poorly maintained trees which just fell from the sky in the center of town who successfully sued this town.

Personally I've never met any police with much mechanical aptitude but this is Cheshire and much magical stuff transpires. After all just visit the bubble top pool with its wonderful locker room, I mean the town pool with its wonderful temporary trailer system I mean - - - Who knows, maybe the local Chief personally issues NUTS & BOLTS QUAL CARDS to certain police officers.

Anonymous said...

Residents of this town need to get out more and bitch less. Wallingford Police not only put up signage, but also have a quarter-million dollar truck to change lights on stop lights. The trees that fell were not the police depts. responsibility. The towns and states neglect was for not requiring the Cheshire Academy from removing them. Years ago, Cheshire Academy argued when the road was being re-aligned and widened that they were "historic" ancient trees that should remain.

Where do you think the cameras would come out? If they managed to direct them directly into a sump pump, there would be no camera left after meeting the impeller. If they came into a drain, you would have a camera coming out of your sink, toilet or shower drain. It is hard to control where the end of the camera comes out since drainage does not include street signs. Without a warrant to search your property, including your sewer lines, the town, regardless of discharge laws, would be open to a lawsuit. While it sounds like a good idea in theory, our former town attorney advised against it.

My advise is to get out of your house once in a while and look around. There are a million things that go on in and out of Cheshire that would shut you up.

Anonymous said...

"...Without a warrant to search your property, including your sewer lines, the town, regardless of discharge laws, would be open to a lawsuit..."

Clearly you have very pointed views of reality. Taking on your logic would result in a town like this one being frightened of the imaginary consequences for just routinely maintaining its sewer system. Your logic would preclude allowing for curb side trash pickups too.

After all, once you got down into the public piping in the public right-of-way you never know what you might find. Who knows, you might even see cracks in the piping which could either let ground water in or sewage out and if someone where discharging thousands of gallons an hour you sure wouldn’t need to enter there actual connection to the town system in order to see that they were doing something illegal either. And then of course if while you are upgrading a pumping station the work plan changes and negatively impacts the budget just go ahead and spend the extra money without taking it before the voters - - -

As for your assertion that if Wallingford does something it kind of justifies what this town does that is like saying if Bernie Madoff does it it's okay if our town council or our town manager does it too.

CT towns which are currently racing towards insolvency on the backs of CT municipal labor unions and a state level Democrat supermajority don't need to be assigning any time what so ever to physical maintenance of street signs. Police need to be policing and they don't need nice new shiny F-150 pickups to do it either.

Anonymous said...

that "shiney new pickup" is almost 10 years old and was purchased 2 chiefs ago. Shows how much you pay attention to the small world around you. State mandated road signage on town roadways are the responibility of the local police force. Why does it matter who puts a sign up? Public works wanted to hire 2 more people to put signs up for the police. Also, traffic division can replace a sign at all hours of the day depending on necessity without having to pay 2 people overtime to do the same job.

The town inspecting pipes under the road is perfectly legal. Problem is when they send the camera into a home branch line. If they were to watch a homes branch and see water flowing, they would have to calculate the flow and frequency to see if it justifies further investigation. Most sump pumps that I have seen pump about 10 gallons a minute so the pit (if installed correctly) can be emptied in about 30 second bursts. It would resemble a toilet flush or washing machine draining. It would be almost impossible to find the offending homes.

Another way of looking at cracks in the pipes is less water is making it to the treatment plant because pressure is forcing water out of the system during heavy flow and allowing water in during light flow.

As for my "pointed views of reality", I look at things logicly and in a practical sense.

tim white said...

"They stopped checking because the town had no legal autority to enter any home to perform a search without cause."

"Problem is when they send the camera into a home branch line."

Are you saying this problem was foreseeable? And that the town should have never gone down this path in the first place?

Anonymous said...

"...they would have to calculate the flow and frequency to see if it justifies further investigation. Most sump pumps that I have seen pump about 10 gallons a minute ..."


Seems to be you are chasing your tail on this one. Let's see. If the town is looking for something like 10's of thousands of gallons of extra sewer water daily it is hard to believe that any home with a 10 gpm sump pump could provide that amount of water. At 1,440 minutes per day that 10 gpm pump would only move about 14,400 gallons per day. If I were looking for say 100,000 gallons extra a day I sure wouldn't have any trouble recognizing a single home owner sump pump doing its 10 gpm 24/7 routine now would I?

Alternately, assuming “10 gpm 30 second bursts” it would take about 20,000 individual 10gpm sump pumps pumping 5 gallons each per day to add an extra 100,000 gallons to the sewer plant. It is hard to believe that Cheshire has over 20,000 leaky basements out of a total of about 9,000 housing units.

Based on local construction practices it is more likely that over many years some local contractors could have installed thousands of toilets and faucets which leak that much but - - -

So, knowing that this is how the numbers work out either the town fathers believe they are surrounded by blatant law breakers in every neighborhood in town or there was something else motivating them.

Personally I bet on arrogance and next on municipal employee job preservation. Whatever it was each and every resident,tax payer, and voter was served incredibly poorly by elected officials and paid town employees.

Currently too much storm water is still running into the sewer plant. Will the sewer line repairs work any better then all the repairs over the years to the town pool which presently doesn't even have permanent indoor changing facilities anymore?

November elections can't come soon enough this year.

Anonymous said...

Tim, you are right. The town isn't going to look into sump pumps any further.

Every town has an excess flow when it rains. When you deal with inderground piping water will find it's way in

Would you rather the town had no temporary facilities at the pool? Better yet, dredge mixville and use the sediment to fill in the pool. We don't "need" either facility so let's close the more expensive one.

So glad I voted against the pool and Tim