Flagrantly Foul: December Rainfall Shows Extent of City’s Sewer Problem

By Andy Mead and Michelle Ku, The Lexington Herald-Leader, Ky.

Feb. 18–It wasn’t an extraordinary amount of rain — less than 4 inches spread over six days last December — but it exposed one of Lexington’s dirty little secrets.

By Dec. 13, the sixth day, city officials were reporting to the state that untreated sewage was overflowing from 46 manholes and 15 pump stations (also called lift stations) around town. The estimated total: More than 16 million gallons of sewage that found its way into yards, basements, streets and parks on its way to the county’s creeks and streams.

At just one pump station on Bowman’s Mill Road, in the southwest quadrant of the county where upscale neighborhoods such as Firebrook are found, nearly 6 million gallons of sewage flowed out and eventually found its way to South Elkhorn Creek.

Many manholes were spewing around Lexington Mall and down Tates Creek Road, where such problems are common.

Such sanitary sewage overflows were one of the main problems cited by the federal Environmental Protection Agency in November 2006 when it sued Lexington for allegedly violating the Clean Water Act. The negotiated settlement of that suit, called a consent decree, is expected to be signed and made public Tuesday.

The city probably will face many millions of dollars in required improvements and fines, and residents are likely to see much higher sewer bills. A proposal to double sewer fees over the next two years could get final approval Thursday.

Emma Tibbs, government affairs director for the Fayette County Neighborhood Council, said last week that she was surprised that so many gallons of sewage flowed out of the system before reaching a treatment plant during the December rainstorm.

“I can’t believe we have this much considering we had a drought most of last year,” Tibbs said, because dry ground can absorb more rainwater.

But Charles Martin, director of the city’s Division of Water and Air Quality, said the ground was pretty saturated by those December rains. And when the ground is wet, he said, “any substantial rainy day” can overwhelm the sewer system.

That happens more often than you might think: The city has a list of 110 manholes and pump stations that overflow at least once a year.

“It’s illegal, but we’re almost desensitized to it,” said Ken Cooke, a Lexington resident who recently retired from the state Division of Water.

Messy to fix, too

The problems with Lexington’s sewer system were created over decades, and will take years to fix.

City officials have said they will try some innovative solutions, such as encouraging people to create rain gardens that slow runoff after rains. But in many cases, the solution will be conventional and messy: A long-buried pipe under a street or sidewalk dug up and replaced, followed by repaving.

The city already has a list of sewer projects that totals well over $100 million; that figure is expected to skyrocket when details of the consent decree become available and after a thorough study of the sewer systems is completed.

City officials have noted that, even if the money to do all the needed work would magically appear, there wouldn’t be enough contractors to do the work.

The push to fix the sewer system began in the late 1990s.

The Fayette County Neighborhood Council spent two years collecting information about overflows from city records, state documents and affidavits from residents. The report, completed in 1998, was several hundred pages long.

“They brought it to everyone’s attention,” Councilwoman Linda Gorton said. “Had it not been for the work of the neighborhood council, we may not have gotten there as soon.”

That same year, a city study estimated that $90.4 million needed to be spent over the next 20 years just to make sure that the sewer system kept up with residential and commercial growth.

The two reports spurred the city to act. Bonds were sold to pay for some projects. In 2002, the sewer user fee was increased. A committee was established to oversee the bond projects.

But just one year after the user fee increase, the EPA began looking into Lexington’s sewer problems. Its main concern: Lexington’s sewers were polluting streams.

How rainwater, sewage mix

When it rains, runoff is supposed to flow into a storm sewer, which empties into a creek. Water from bathrooms and kitchens goes into a sanitary sewer, which carries it through a treatment plant before it is discharged into a creek.

What happens all too often in Lexington is that rainwater ends up in sanitary sewers, and waste winds up in storm sewers.

Sometimes, the sanitary sewer pipe is broken, and groundwater simply flows in.

In many older neighborhoods, basement sump pumps and even gutter downspouts take rainwater into sanitary sewers instead of storm sewers.

In some places, there are built-in connections between sanitary and storm sewer pipes because that used to be a standard way of designing the systems.

The EPA suit took special note of those connections, calling them “illicit discharges.”

On an average day with no recent rain, Lexington’s two sewage treatment plants handle about 15 million gallons each, said Martin of the city’s Division of Water and Air Quality.

After a heavy rain, so much rainwater gets into the sanitary system that the number can reach 50 million gallons at the Town Branch plant, and more than 60 million gallons at the West Hickman plant. That doesn’t count the millions of gallons of diluted but untreated sewage that don’t make it to the plants, but instead spew from pump stations and manholes all over town.

Since at least 2000, the city’s mayors and council have wanted to make things better, but didn’t have the money to fix the problem, Tibbs said.

In the 2006 lawsuit, the EPA said that “unless restrained by an order of the court,” the city wouldn’t find a way to come up with the money and creeks would continue to be polluted.

The suit itself provided the push that local officials needed.

“When the sheriff comes to town, the EPA, they all have political cover to raise fees,” Tibbs said.

No one wants to pay more, but Tibbs and city officials believe that Lexington can’t do what the federal government will require without a recurring source of money.

“Gradually, as people get their problems fixed in their neighborhoods, they’ll see the benefits,” Tibbs said.

Reach Andy Mead at (859) 231-3319 or 1-800-950-6397 Ext. 3319. Reach Michelle Ku at (859) 231-1335 or 1-800-950-6397 Ext. 1335.

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