Public works: smoke test finds 84 sewer infiltration spots; staff recommends caps, CCTV and possible $150k evaluation

Public works staff told the Statham mayor and council on Jan. 7 that a recent smoke test identified 84 locations of infiltration and inflow into the city's sewer system and recommended inexpensive immediate repairs and longer-term evaluation work.

"There was about 84 locations identified as for I and I infiltration and inflow into our sewer system," the public works representative said, adding that 35 of those locations were in the public right-of-way and the remainder largely on private property near homeowners' houses. The representative said many issues were simple — broken or missing cleanout caps — and suggested the city purchase caps and begin repairs.

Staff highlighted several higher-priority areas: about nine manholes on 8th Street that need resealing and areas near 2nd and Elizabeth where smoke testing indicated a storm drain is connected to the sanitary sewer. Those connections will require closed-circuit television (CCTV) inspection and further work to isolate and repair cross-connections.

The public works speaker said the city's engineers provided a written report, including a proposal from EMI for a sanitary-sewer evaluation that would catalog manholes, provide CCTV inspection and assign condition grades. The speaker noted that such an evaluation would be budget-level work to consider for the next fiscal year and referenced a figure in the report in the low hundreds of thousands.

Council members were told that many repairs can be done quickly at low cost (caps cost only a few dollars apiece) while larger evaluation and repair projects would be scoped and scheduled through the budget process.

Next steps: staff will obtain copies of the smoke-test report for council review, plan to purchase and install cleanout caps for immediate fixes, and discuss CCTV and evaluation work during upcoming budget planning.