Woman Fed Up With Sewer Backflow

The rain Monday night caused another overflow in a north Tulsa neighborhood.  It's happened several times this year.  And, The News On 6's Emory Bryan reports it's much worse than it sounds.

Patty MacQuellan was happy to have someone come look at her flooding problem.

"And it just runs down and into the garden and out into the backyard and all they do is come out and spray and tell me it's God's fault it rained," said Patty MacQuellan.

The problem is that it's not plain water, it's raw sewage.  It flows into her driveway, into her garage despite the sandbags, and then under and around her house.

"Every time it rains over an inch, we get the backflow," said Patty's daughter, Jean Marie Colclasure.

Whenever it rains, a manhole overflows.  Toilet paper can be seen around the cover.  It's downhill from the manhole cover to Mrs. MacQuellan's house.

"For 2 hours after it rained, that manhole cover drained and ran through this yard," said Patty MacQuellan.

Her pictures of the past few overflows show a small fountain of sewage in her backyard.  The river of sewage really does flow through it.  When the sun comes out, she's left with plenty of reminders of everything that goes down toilets.

It's a problem the city is about to fix.

"So if we take out the water out upstream of her, it takes the liquid level down and allows it to not overflow," said Matt Vaughan with the City of Tulsa.

Matt Vaughan, the city's wastewater design engineer, says rain is getting into the sewer, making it overflow.

"There could be multiple defects in the sanitary sewer or there could be illegal connections between the storm sewer and the sanitary sewer system," said Matt Vaughan with the City of Tulsa.

It's a $2.5 million job to dig up the pipes and replace them and Mrs. MacQuellan can't wait.

"In America, you shouldn't have to live this way," said Patty MacQuellan.

The city believes the problem is a neighborhood just to the east of MacQuellan's, so that's where the work will happen.  The job is expected to take 10 months to complete.