Saturday, April 22, 2006

Odorous Faithful

While I was away last weekend, this is what happened next door.

The city sewer line runs in front of my house, then down through the vacant lot next to my house, then along the lake to a pump station at the end of the street (about 1,000 feet). At every turn, and in every lot, there is a manhole cover. [I don't know why it runs along the lake, it seems like a strange idea to me also.]

The people next door noticed that their toilets were gurgling. They called the city. Someone came, looked, and called for backup. It seems the main sewer line was completely blocked between their house and the house on the other side of them. For reasons that I do not know, the city decided to blow out the block by blasting air on the downstream side of the block. I would have thought that they would have tried to move the block down the line rather than up (where the sewer was completely filled).

Can you see this one coming? We'll the next door neighbors didn't! They were working in the yard when the city let go a super blast of air into the sewer line. The manhole cover in their yard blew about 20 feet in the air, followed quickly by a geyser of raw sewage. Fortunately, no one was hurt, or drenched in downpour, but they will not be having a yard party any time soon.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

gurgling toilets
will one day rule the world
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it sounds like the name of a garage band

Jay Noel said...

Yet another feat of engineering ingenuity! Have a great weekend, my friend.
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it's called avoiding the heart of the problem

:P fuzzbox said...

Did the city charge them fertilization fees?
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the city is keeping a low profile, my guess is that they were supposed to notify the EPA because the lake is right there

Anonymous said...

That stinks! ;)
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at least it will concentrate the flies all in one place this summer

stan said...

Now you can say you live in a crappy neighborhood.