Inquirer: City can't help with private rain drain

Christmas week finds us back in the Lakebottom neighborhood, this time just a few blocks from where someone had dumped about 15 old tires into the yard of a vacant house.

For the record, those were picked up either the day I called or the day after, so we can thank the city for prompt attention to that. And how do we thank the city? We call them to gripe about something else, of course. (It's amazing they answer the phone when my number pops up.)

I'll let Concerned Reader Peter B., who lives on 17th Avenue near the park, relate his tale of woe.

"The sewer inlet in front of my house is recurrently clogged so that water backs up out of the sewer into the street, and the ground becomes so saturated that water also percolates up out of my water meter box (this only happens following rains). I have been in touch with Public Works about this numerous times over the past 18 months, and although crews have come out several times to look and to pump out the sewer, the problem persists."

Peter said a city crew was there again last week and they managed to get the drain drained. But he's concerned that they haven't addressed the root cause, which literally could be roots or maybe a collapsed pipe. He thinks that might be it because a rain drain immediately across the street does not back up.

Peter also said about a year ago, they said they were going to run a camera down into the drain pipes to see if anything was amiss.

"To my knowledge this has never been done," Peter wrote.

I called Ron Smith, deputy public works director, to see if he knew what the status of the 17th Avenue problem was, and after doing some checking, he had the answer.

"We have some history with that drain," Smith said. "We've sent crews out there several times, in fact we sent two trucks out there this week."

So what's the diagnosis?

"The problem is that this man has a private drain line which services only his property. We don't maintain private lines. We've gone out there and serviced the public line, but if you have a line that only serves your property, we do not maintain it."

He also said that people in the Lakebottom area should realize that in really heavy rains, when Weracoba swells above a certain point, the drains can't drain until the creek goes back down, Lord willing.

Seen something that needs attention? Contact me at 706-571-8570 or mowen@ledger-enquirer.com.

This story was originally published December 28, 2014 at 8:34 PM with the headline "Inquirer: City can't help with private rain drain."