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Lorain board weighs homeowner check-valve program as sewage backups keep damaging basements
Summary
At a Sewer Water Advisory Board meeting, members discussed recurring basement backups after an August 2023 storm, options to reduce inflow and infiltration (I&I) including homeowner-installed check valves and sump pumps, and the costs and ownership questions tied to any assistance program.
At a meeting of the Sewer Water Advisory Board, members and city staff spent significant time discussing repeated basement flooding in older neighborhoods and possible city and homeowner measures to prevent sewage from entering basements.
The discussion centered on a pattern the board first identified after an Aug. 22, 2023 storm, when sanitary sewers overloaded and sewage entered private basements. Mr. McGannan, chair of the Sewer Water Advisory Board, summarized the board’s prior recommendation that the city review engineering reports from 2006 to see whether measures could be applied now to reduce sewer backups at the property line.
Mr. Carbonaro, utilities director, told the board he had asked City Engineer Darryl Vanderselman to review the prior numbers with a consultant and concluded the city could not realistically fund a broad program to purchase and install check valves for homeowners. “The amount of money due to the increased cost of purchasing the check valves and then installing the check valves,…
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