City Asks to Inspect Private Property Sewers to Solve Overflows

Private property water infiltration and inflow (PPII) doesn’t lend itself to pictures of young children , but it affects every property owner when a hard rain falls and basements fill with sewage. And it is an issue that could cost the city and private property owners millions in or fines and costs.

Approximately 30 citizens gathered in the Brookfield municipal courtroom Tuesday evening to learn about their Adelaide subdivision becoming a pilot area for a PPII inspection. The project, sponsored by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District and the city, is voluntary and encourages home owners to allow the inspection of their sewer laterals, sump pumps, downspouts and other drainage areas on their properties.

MMSD has a short video explaining the problem. 

Sewer laterals run from the street into the home, connecting the property to the public sanitary sewer. They belong to the property owner and are maintained as part of the property. 

“Laterals are only supposed to carry waste water from sinks, toilets, showers into the sanitary sewer,” Brookfield Public Works Director Tom Grisa said.

The problem is older laterals are cracked and allow ground water to seep into them or they are illegally connected to downspouts, sump pumps and foundation drains. These breaches into the laterals allow clear water (storm water) to enter sanitary sewers, taking up volume and forcing backups of sewage into basements. 

As a result of the 2010 flooding that occurred across the metropolitan area, MMSD decided to implement a comprehensive PPII study to find leaks in lateral sewer lines or illegal connections. The district budgeted $62 million for the entire region, to cover inspection costs and repairs.

Earlier this year, the Common Council voted to allow for their portion of the funds to cover the total cost of the inspections (approximately $1,000 per home) and provide cost-sharing grants for repairs needed by home owners.

Prior to the PPII inspections, Brookfield has inspected the public sewer lines, manholes and drains for leaks. Grisa said those inspections resulted in repairs to the city’s public infrastructure, but now the other half of the equation — private properties — need to be part of the process.

“We’re focusing on areas with flooding issues or housing stock from the 1940-1960,” Grisa said. “The city has made repairs to publicly owned sewers and we even bought seven homes off of Lilly to create an open field to alleviate flooding and direct water into the Underwood Creek.”

MMSD and Brookfield have started inspections in the Robinwood subdivision in the southeast corner of the city. A flow meter installed in the neighborhood shows during non-rain days 20 gallons per minute of clear water is seeping into the sanitary sewers. But on rain days, with as little as .3 of an inch of rain, up to 85 gpm of clear water seeped into the sanitary lines. 

The inspections will be conducted by Brown and Caldwell, a private engineering firm, and a subcontractor. Property owners volunteer for the two-day inspection (at no cost), which includes an in-home inspection of floor drains and sump pumps, along with review of outside rain spouts and grading. A test involving the injection of dye-colored water into the ground above the lateral line allows for a radio-controlled camera to detect leaks of groundwater into the lateral pipe with no disturbance to the property.

Brown and Caldwell representative Andy Lukas said if a lateral leak is discovered there are a number of remedies available that don’t require replacing the pipe or disturbing landscaping. However, if the pipe is very old, broken or disintegrated, replacement may be necessary. He said a recent quote for lateral pipe repair in the City of Milwaukee was approximately $8,000.

The cost of lateral pipe repairs are the responsibility of the property owners. However, the MMSD/Brookfield partnership would allow for 75 percent of the repair or replacement cost to be covered by a grant up to $8,000.

Other sanitary sewer breaches are easier and less costly to repair — removing a downspout from a sanitary connection and installing an elbow to redirect the storm water away from the home or making sure the sump pump is emptying to the yard and not connected via a pipe to the lateral.

Residents had many questions for Grisa and Lukas, but many of them were off point focusing on storm water, city drain inlets and wetlands. One resident, Jim, lives at the top of the hill at Tru and Oak Hill Lanes.

“There’s no real reason for me to do this, since it all flows down from my house, but we should all be concerned about the people below us,” he said. “We all need to be in this together.”

Grisa hopes to expand the inspection program to other Brookfield neighborhoods in the MMSD service area, which includes properties east of Calhoun Road and north of Bluemound and east of Sunny Slope and south of Bluemound. He would like to use the participation and results of the testing as an example of the city’s remediation program required by the EPA by next March.

Ald. Bill Carnell said he would encourage everyone in the Aldelaide neighborhood to take advantage of this opportunity to maintain their sewer lines with the help of free grant money.

 “I hope we get the participation now to show the EPA we can do this ourselves, on our terms,” Carnell said.

He added that properties in western Brookfield that empty into the Mississippi Water Basin would not have the funding of the MMSD project. But he would be willing to look at using reserve water and sewer funds to assist with inexpensive repairs or help families with hardships to fix lateral problems discovered if the PPII inspections are adopted in those parts of the city.

Residents in the two subdivisions currently part of the PPII inspections can obtain a sign up waiver here or by calling Tom Grisa at 262-796-6644.