By S. Heather Duncan - This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Lauren Bryant arrived home one night to find water pouring from underneath her garage wall.

Only it wasn't just water. It was sewage, gushing into a downstairs bathroom and flooding the kitchen, laundry room, hallway and garage. In the aftermath, Bryant and her husband had to re-tile, repaint, and replace bathroom fixtures and drywall.

The Bryants first called a plumber, who told them the problem wasn't in their pipes. Bryant said the sewage had backed up into their home because of a grease clog in the sewer line under Castlegate Road in front of their house.

It's a more common problem than many homeowners realize. Some residents describe backups in previous decades that inundated entire floors in more than a foot of sewage.

Frequently, sewage backups happen because of problems within people's own pipes or as a result of full septic tanks. But leaky public sewer lines and blockages in sewer pipes also can cause sewage to erupt from people's toilets and showers.

The law requires Georgia sewer providers to report to the state, as well as local media outlets, any sewage overflows that contaminate streams, lakes or other public waters. Sewage backups into people's homes are essentially the same type of overflowwith the same causes, but instead of spilling out of a manhole, they flow into a house.

Because there is no environmental contamination, the authority is not required to report them in the same way.

The damage often happens after a storm, when water infiltrates sewer lines. The victims usually live near the lowest elevation on a public sewer line.

Spot checks with local insurance companies indicate that it's not covered by many homeowners' insurance policies.

For $300 to $500, a backflow prevention device can be installed on the line connecting the house to the public sewer, but most homeowners don't know about it.

Those who have dealt with sewage backflows say installing the device would be a sound investment. "I think they should require backflow preventers on all new houses," Bryant said.
Tony Thompson installed a backflow preventer immediately after he learned about them from a letter the authority sends customers who suffer a sewage backflow.

First-time homeowner Thompson said sewage has backed up into a toilet at his Kingsview Circle home about every three months for the four years his family has lived there.

He said he had talked to the authority about it repeatedly, but was never informed about a prevention device, which would have stopped sewage from soaking his bathroom floor and hall carpets Feb. 1. It was hard to keep his 3-year-old daughter clear of the area as he cleaned up the spill, Thompson said.

He said the authority responded quickly to stop the backflow and arranged to have his rugs cleaned.

"They did take care of us when it got bad," he said. "It was good customer service, but it would have been nice to know about the backflow preventer years ago."

Macy said he has no record of previous backups on Kingsview Circle, but the authority doesn't track all the calls it receives about toilets flushing poorly.

Macy said there have been no repeat backflows at any address in recent years because the authority started regarding the nearby sewer line as a "hot spot," checking it more often.

NO INDUSTRY STANDARD

National associations that represent sewer utilities say sewage backups happen in all sewer systems, but there is no industry standard on how to handle it.

Macon Water Authority officials say it happens about once a month in Macon.

"I don't consider that all that frequent," said Tony Rojas, the authority's director, nothing that the authority has 46,000 sewer customers and fewer than 10 were affected last year.

Barry Jarrett, the Milledgeville utilities director, said it happens about five times a month in that city's system, although fewer than three of those times generally involve sewage spilling beyond the toilet or bathtub.

Warner Robins referred questions about that city's policy on sewage backups to Mayor Donald Walker, who has been unavailable because of illness in recent weeks.

In Macon and Milledgeville, sewer workers immediately clean out the sewer line to stop the flow into the house, officials said.

Occasionally, removing a clog with high-pressure spray results in a brief, strong additional spray of sewage into the home, Rojas said.

Bryant said this happened as the authority cleared the sewer line near her house in December.
The Macon Water Authority has a contract with a cleaning service to immediately clean floors when the overflow was caused by a problem in the authority's sewer line, Macy said.

"That type of situation is just too bad to leave," said Frank Amerson, the authority's chairman. "I guess that's one of the worst things that can happen to you. ... It needs to be cleaned up immediately."

In one case when young children were being exposed to sewage, the authority paid to house the family in a hotel overnight. Macy said this was the worst backflow in the four years he's worked for the authority, and it resulted in about two inches of sewage on the walls of a room.

If the backup caused damage that requires more than floor cleaning, the authority is authorized by its charter to pay up to $1,000 to cover losses. Amerson said this started in 1996 after the authority asked the Legislature to change its charter to allow the utility to help people harmed by backflows.

However, any costs beyond $1,000 must be paid by the homeowner out of pocket. Those who don't want to settle this way can still file a claim with the authority's insurance company, Rojas said.

That's what the Bryants did. Lauren Bryant said they received $6,000 in compensation for work that cost about $7,000.

The authority won't pay for damages caused by backflows within the same house twice. After the first time, homeowners are warned to buy a prevention device.

Jarrett said Milledgeville used to compensate homeowners for damage but stopped after a policy change a decade or more ago.

Susan Bruninga, policy director for the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, said in an e-mail, "I think you'll find that the standard practice is that if the problem is caused by a clog in the municipal portion of the system ... cities will by and large cover the cost after considering the various circumstances."

Some cities have gone further, although not always on their own initiative.

Cincinnati has a "Water-in-Basement Response Program" that includes free installation of backflow preventers, pump systems, or waterproofed floors for residents who have had repeated backups or backups since 2004.

But the program was created as part of a consent order the city was forced to hammer out with the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Justice, because Cincinnati was not addressing its many sewer problems.

Amerson and Jarrett, who have both worked for many years with their respective sewer systems, said they don't remember their utilities ever being sued by a homeowner because of a sewage backup.

To contact writer S. Heather Duncan, call 744-4225.