City Inspects Sewage Problem Linked To Fairgrounds

Tuesday, August 28th 2007, 6:00 pm

By: News On 6

Horse and livestock shows have become very popular at the Tulsa County Fairgrounds, but runoff can wreak havoc on the surrounding sewer system. Hay and manure are clogging both storm and sanitary sewer lines, flooding streets, and in one case, backing sewage into a woman's basement. The News On 6â€™s Steve Berg reports part of the problem comes from the clean-out caps at the fairgrounds RV park.

City inspector Frank Durham says the problem arose, literally and unpleasantly, during the heavy rains back in July.

"There was hay and horse feces coming up in a lady's basement," said Frank Durham, City Inspector.

Those two items naturally led them to the fairgrounds, which is county property, but all the drains tie into the city's sewer system. So it's the job of inspectors from the city to give the fairgrounds RV park a thorough going-over. They discovered that during a recent livestock show the RV park was used as a temporary holding pen for animals, and the city says many of the RV clean-out caps were left off.

"And of course that's where they hay and straw and animal feces entered the sanitary," Durham said.

And even on Tuesday, well after last month's incident, they still found a lot of caps removed or not tightly secured. Durham agrees it's tough to keep up with so many RV owners and horse shows.

"But it's something they have to do because we can't have raw sewage coming up in neighbor's basements," he said.

That's just part of the problem. Hay and manure are also getting into the storm sewers, which the city says exacerbated the street flooding last month.

Even during dry weather though there can still be a problem. For example, we haven't had much rain lately but there's still quite a bit of straw and dirt that have collected around storm drain surrounding the fairgrounds.

"We had a little storm last Friday night and that's probably the remnants of it," said Durham.

The city says it sometimes charges businesses for clean-outs if they're to blame for clogging a sewer. We asked the inspector if the city would charge the county for these clean-outs. He says that's up to a higher supervisor. Those clean-outs aren't cheap for taxpayers either; the city says they can cost about $2,000.

Watch the video: Fairgrounds Sewer Issue Spills Into Nearby Neighborhood