Residents ask sanitary district for reimbursement

Jennifer Kho

COSTA MESA -- The city and sanitary district both deny responsibility

for sewage spills that flooded a Drake Street home, but the homeowners

say they think they should be reimbursed for some of their expenses.

Erin and Jeff Locke, who have lived at 2718 Drake St. for about a

year, say their lives have been upheaved by the two spills that happened

in December and June and filed a letter Monday asking the district for

reimbursement.

“My bed is in the living room, and all the baby stuff is out here

too,” Erin Locke said. “Every time I use the bathroom, I’m afraid it’s

going to flood again. This is so frustrating.”

The first spill happened while Locke was pregnant with her second

child and the second happened six days after her son was born.

A cleanup valve to keep sewage from coming into the house in the

future was installed in a pipe under their driveway this week and the

family expects that redoing the walls, tiles and floors of the house will

take at least another month.

Not including the repairs to the house, which the insurance company is

helping to pay for, the spills have cost the family between $6,500 and

$7,000, said Elaine Stuckey, Locke’s mother.

Stuckey said plumbers said tree roots under the sidewalk area caused

the first spill.

The city removed a nearby tree, but denied a claim filed by the

Lockes, stating that most tree roots don’t damage lateral sewage lines

but instead grow into pipes that are already damaged.

The cause of the second spill is still unknown because plumbers

excavated pipe up to 80 feet from the drain and didn’t find any blockage,

Stuckey said.

The letter filed with the sanitary district Monday asks the district

to pay for some of the expenses caused by the second spill and for

further excavation work to analyze the problem and prevent another spill.

But sanitary district representatives say the district is not at

fault.

Rob Hamers, general manager for the district, said property owners are

responsible for keeping their sewer laterals running smoothly because the

laterals are installed by the original home constructors, not the

district.

Laterals are pipes that run from the district’s main pipeline to the

homes.

“Generally speaking, if the problem is in the homeowner’s lateral, it

is the homeowner’s responsibility even though part of the lateral is in

the street because we have no control over the trees the property owners

plant, what they put down their lateral, whether they maintain the pipes

properly or whether the original constructor constructed the pipes

properly,” Hamers said. “In this case, the problem was clearly the

[lateral] because we checked our main line and the main line has been

running fine throughout this whole process.”

Hamers said the district sent people to try to help the Lockes figure

out what the problem was, but Erin Locke said she doesn’t think the

district has been helpful.

“They just keep saying ‘It’s not our fault. You’re just going to have

to deal with it,”’ she said.

Hamers said the Lockes should have kept the line maintained better to

avoid the spills.

“It’s unfortunate they had a backup, but they needed to do a little

more maintenance on the line,” he said.

Inexpensive compounds to kill roots and take care of grease can be

applied regularly to prevent problems, and it’s also inexpensive to have

sewer laterals videotaped to check for problems, Hamers said.