Sewer issues in Washington have been a priority of the council in recent years and at their recent meeting they approved a facility plan to improve the southeast sanitary sewer basin.

City Administrator Brent Hinson said that was the area where they received the most reports of basement back up issues. He explained crews did smoke testing, manhole inspections and televising to determine the condition of the system, “The good news and the bad news, I suppose, is that there wasn’t a simple solution but that largely the problems were really related to system maintenance in that particular basin. It doesn’t mean that we won’t find, you know, lots of sources of direct inflow in other areas, but primarily the problem in the southeast basin is infiltration of storm water which is from essentially lack of maintenance. We have a lot of clay pipe in our system, and clay pipe cracks, then water infiltrates into the sanitary sewer.”

Work needed includes manhole rehabilitation, manhole replacements, sewer lining, and sewer point repairs. The city is going to move forward with a $1 million project and with this facility plan approved they can apply for a $600,000 Community Development Block Grant to further the scope of work. Ideally work would begin in mid-summer.