Hello all~ during a storm we had the agonizing blow of raw sewage filling our basement....thing is~ it was not our sewage! Sewage was coming in through a floor drain of our basement. My husband started doing some investigating around our yard to find out how this could happen, since our sewer is connected to city sewage on the other side of our house. He dug down approx. 8 ft and found the pipe that connects to our floor drain and broke it off. He was immediately met with a barrage of raw sewage and muddy water. We also noted that this "terra cotta" pipe had branches that ran off and ended where our gutters did, thus my husband concluding that this is a rain runoff drain of some sort. Did some talking to our neighbor behind and up the hill from us who gave us this bit of history: my, his and the neighbor next door to him were the 1st homes in the neighborhood~each built in the 40's, early 50's; the builders/homeowners were friends; they may have gotten together and built a "private" retention basin at the back of the homes behind me and connected their downspouts to it; my basement and gutter pipes are connected to this very same drain somewhere; we are not sure if it ended in a drain field; when the city wanted homes to connect to city sewage, my house was done according to code; the two homes were not; somehow, instead of the homes being connected to city sewer on their street(probably impossible due to the fact they sit on a hill and would need a pump to assist with that process) they hooked their sewer lines up to this old retention basin and let it go, thus our problem of their sewer in our basement...of course we have asked for assistance from the city and the city's utility company to no avail; utility company states that the houses are connected to a "private" lateral and they are not responsible for it~they further claim that they have a connection for those homes that connect on my street and that it is blocked by roots;(since their visit to the property, they now claim that the homes have a lateral for them on their own street, although their grids show those two homes have NO connection to city sewer whatsoever). I can tell you that this "private" lateral as they call it, but we refer to it as a "runoff" line, runs approximately 100 feet along my property to this makeshift "retention" basin. Husband has been digging all over the yard in an attempt to find where our runoff drain connects to this mess; he has found the main line and it is damaged; sewage is now seeping on the ground and is running off to a large ditch that fills with water during storms; our house continues to get their sewage seepage because husband cannot stop it long enough to concrete or fill that line completely in; to make matters worse, we may be sitting on top of an underground spring so we are also dealing with that underground water filling our holes. Perhaps I am wrong, but I thought that for those cities in TN that signed a federal consent decree/pace 10, one of the items that was dealt with was that stormwater or runoff drain pipes were to be seperate from sewer lines? If that is the case, who had the right to tie in my & the neighbors' runoff lines to the city sewer line when they converted to city sewer? If this is a "private" lateral..who is responsible for it? It runs on my property and that part is not an easement of any sort. The city is completely aware of all of this and continues to allow the sewage hook up as it currently stands...no one has taken the initiative to correct how the homes behind me are hooked in; we were supposed to have an engineer from the utility company out to inspect the layout and a representative contact us to follow-up on this case, but neither has happened. Health Dept just bounces us back to the utility company. Husband says his next step may be to contact the EPA. Any suggestions that can be shared? We do not have the means to re-vamp this whole mess. Someone has suggested that we fill that retention basin up with concrete but that basin is not on our property. I don't feel that we need to be the ones to converse with the neighbors if they are indeed tied in wrong and are accountable. Tks for the time and replies. I have included pictures of this makeshift "retention" basin and how the two neighbors are tied in.
