At least two small spills at the Groveland lift station are officially acknowledged to the county
A lift station, for the uninitiated, is where sewage pipes are raised above the ground for the purpose of giving an additional push to pump the waste in the direction of its final destination: a waste processing plant.
What happened at the Groveland lift station in particular, while simultaneous to the county's problems, was totally unrelated. Problems have plagued the lift station for a number of years, problems that area residents in the historic district feel that the city has been hiding and ignoring. Those problems came to a very ugly head on the morning of Saturday, August 9, culminating in a showdown between area residents and one wastewater supervisor and a calmer grilling from another supervisor.
The Groveland lift station is located in Mundy Park at the corner of Groveland Street and Country Club Way (map). Right next to it is Susan Bravo's house, where she has lived for over 20 years. Susan resides there along with her grown daughter, Jessica. Susan can see the back of the lift station, only a few hundred feet away, from her kitchen window. "I can't count the times over the years that I've seen sewage jetting out of the pipes behind the building and going right into the park. I always thought it was effluent or water, I never knew it was raw sewage until recently."
According to reports made to the county by the city, there were only two sewage spills at the Groveland station during the emergency work in question. On Thursday, August 7, and then again on the next day, Friday, two spills that totaled some 450 gallons of raw sewage were caused by a reported overfilling of the tanker trucks (not the vacuum truck, a much smaller unit, as Hunt had stated in his memo).
According to the city, that's all that happened between the dates of August 7 and August 10 at the Groveland lift station: a total of 450 gallons of raw sewage spilled in the middle of a rainstorm over a four-day period.
Sewage? What sewage?
On Saturday morning, Susan Bravo had had enough of the stench that she claims had permeated the neighborhood since Thursday. In addition to the sewage floating through the neighborhood from the two admitted spills, there was a jet of foul-smelling water shooting up out of the pavement in the street in front of her house. The jet of water, about eight inches high, was directly over a known sewage line that runs under the street. Further down the road, two more areas of street appeared to be bleeding sewage up and onto the pavement, one of the locations having been barricaded off by city workers (see photo, above).
In days past, she had complained to city workers on the street about the sewage. The workers acknowledged the sewage, but said there was nothing they could do as the sewage didn't officially exist. She wanted it cleaned up and stopped once and for all, they told her they were powerless to do anything.
Understandably upset, Bravo called the wastewater plant. Pat Wilson, second in command of the utilities department, reportedly answered the phone. Using the kindest voice she could muster under the conditions, Bravo told Wilson "I've got a shit shower out here!!!"
Wilson stated that there had been no sewage spills in the area, and Bravo let slip that she had been told by city workers that there was indeed plenty of sewage in the streets, and besides, any idiot with a nose can tell the difference between rain water and sewage. Bravo then slammed down the phone.
"I hardly ever use swear words," Bravo would later state. "It is very rare for me to be so angry that I'll let a curse word slip past me to someone in the public, but I was so upset by the situation that I did let that one phrase get out."
Names, dammit, we want names!!!
Wastewater supervisor Bill Quigley, who had been working at the Groveland station, walked over to Bravo's house. By this time, several neighbors had gathered in the Bravo front yard. According to the residents, Quigley made it very clear that he was not interested in their complaints. He started off by taking umbrage at the use of the words "shit shower," stating that city employees don't have to take that kind of talk. What he was really upset about was that one or more of his workers had acknowledged the sewage. He wanted to know, in no uncertain terms, which employee had said it.
Quigley hammered that point over and over again. "Who said that? Which employee said that? I want to know who you've been talking to!"
Through the ensuing shout match between Quigley and the neighbors, Quigley insisted that there hadn't been any spills, that the sewer pipes were fine and that there was no sewage whatsoever. Bravo's daughter, Jessica, then took Quigley to task. Walking out to the street and taking a whiff of the water that was rising out of the ground, she angrily asked Quigley: "What do you mean it's not sewage? I can tell that it's sewage, you can smell it. Are you saying that I can't tell what sewage smells like, that I'm crazy?"
"That's what I'm saying, you're crazy!" Quigley reportedly barked back. Quigley then continued to grill the small group of neighbors that had gathered, demanding to know which city workers had stated that there was sewage in the streets.
According to witnesses, this, in turn led to a highly charged and angry squabble between residents and Quigley in which Quigley inadvertently acknowledged that sewage was leaking up from broken pipes under the street. Speaking specifically of the underground sewage pipes, Quigley is reported to have said "...the city will not give me sufficient resources to fix the problem, so I'm doing the best I can." He continued to angrily question the residents about the identities of workers who initially had acknowledged the sewage leaks, reportedly stating that "I need to know who said this, people are trying to get me fired."
Incredulous and outraged at the continued bickering, questioning and whining, neighbors refused to tell him anything. Unsuccessful at obtaining the info, Quigley left the neighbors and walked back to the lift station.
Almost immediately after Quigley walked away, wastewater supervisor Shane Saputo arrived, along with two unidentified men in suits who stayed in the background. Saputo apologized to the residents for Quigley's behavior. Saputo also denied that there was any sewage in the streets, referring to the foul-smelling and dark-colored water instead as "drainage."
According to witnesses, Saputo acted very gentlemanly, stated that he was there representing the city because of their complaints. With "the two suits," as one neighbor put it, hovering in the background, Saputo picked up the questioning where Quigley left off. He too wanted to know who had stated that sewage was in the streets. Eyeing the two "suits" suspiciously, the neighbors refused to cough up any info, sensing that workers' jobs were in danger for speaking matter-of-factly.
Saputo left his business card with one resident and urged the gathering to call him directly if there were any further problems. He then walked away, not knowing anything more than when he arrived about the identity of the talkative workers.
Neither Saputo or Quigley at any time informed the area residents of the reported 450 gallons of spilled raw sewage that occurred as a result of the truck overfills. Except for Quigley's inadvertent and quickly retracted admission, both men stuck to the story that no sewage had been spilled at all in the neighborhood. None. Nada. Zip.
In spite of the repeated statements that there was no spilled sewage in the area, city workers dumped lime all over Bravo's front yard and in the street. Sand was brought in to fill in the hole in the road created by the upsurge of dark-colored water, both in front of Bravo's house and further down the road in a section of road that had been barricaded off.
On Thursday, August 14th, some four days after workers had stopped pumping sewage into trucks, the smell of sewage still filled the air in Mundy Park and in the yards of the surrounding homes. Faint in some areas, pungent to the point of bringing tears to the eyes in other parts of the neighborhood, there was no missing it: the place had indeed taken a shit shower. Wads of not-quite-mud goo were particularly noticeable in the Bravo front yard and in the park.
"It's just frustrating," Susan Bravo later stated. "I don't like being lied to. If they'd just tell us when they have a spill, I can deal with it and take the necessary precautions."
Doing it in the dark
"We're not stupid," resident Joanne Dabrowski would later state when interviewed. "We can tell the difference between water and sewage. We know what sewage smells like and looks like, and this was definitely sewage."
Her husband Jerry stated that sewage in the streets is a chronic problem and has been for years. While confirming what Susan Bravo had stated previously about workers pouring sewage directly onto the grounds of Mundy Park, Jerry also talked about how wastewater workers will come in to the park at night, hook up a pump behind the building, turn off the exterior lights and then flood the park with raw sewage. "They've been doing that for as long as I can remember, I have seen it done many times. The rear lights stay on all the time unless they are spilling sewage in the park, they like to do that in the dark." Jerry stated he has seen this happen on numerous occasions while walking his dog late at night. The Dabrowskis state they have lived in the neighborhood for fourteen years.
The city has made no recent reports to the county of broken pipes underneath Groveland Street. According to the city, the total spillage between August 7 and August 10 at the location was the 450 gallons from the two truck overflow incidents. Jerry Dabrowski shook his head in disbelief when told: "Every time we have a heavy rain, you can see the sewage bleeding up through the street. This whole street was repaved three or four years ago, just look at it now: holes, patches and [fill-in] sand everywhere."
Dabrowski also had an interesting observation about the sewage jetting up and out of the street. He claims he has seen it many times. "As soon as they start pumping into a truck at the lift station, that jet disappears. They'll stop pumping, we'll get the backpressure heading back our way down the street, and the water will start shooting up into the air again."
Joanne Dabrowski, who works for the Child Development Center, decried the city's apparent apathy. "Aside from being a park, that corner is also a school-bus pickup corner. We've been complaining about it for years and nothing ever gets done."
Why so much sewage when it rains?
Leaks in pipes and other factors cause what is known in the sewage trade as infiltration and exfiltration. Infiltration is water seeping in to the sewage system, exfiltration is sewage seeping out of the system.
"You look at the flow charts," one former utilities director stated. "They can tell you the bulk of the problem. When you have a spike in rainfall and that is followed a short time later by a comparable spike in sewage intake, you have some serious problems in your system. People don't suddenly all go to the bathroom at the same time when it rains."
There are times when people do that. Superbowl halftime is notorious. Shortly after the first Superbowl halftime commercial airs, wastewater plants across the country are deluged with the biggest single sewage spurt of the year. Many wastewater plants as much as double their normal crew on Superbowl Sunday.
Infiltration can happen from a variety of sources, cracked pipes being only one. Unauthorized tap-ins to the sewer system by homeowners, open manholes, etc., can all lead to a drastic increase in sewage when it rains. There are ways to find infiltration sources, one relatively inexpensive way is called "smoking the pipes." In that process, pressurized smoke is fed into the pipes, then you wait and look around to see where the smoke is coming out. Sometimes you'll see smoke seeping up out of the ground, but it is not uncommon to see smoke suddenly pouring out of household roof vents and amateur-plumbed yard drains.
One unconfirmed story that has surfaced a few times about the Groveland lift station is the fish story. As this tale goes, small live fish have been found in the pumps inside the lift station, suggesting that at least one source of the bonus water is from an open cleanout near a pond.
