It’s never good when your basement takes on water. Flooding can cause serious damage to your home, and even small amounts of moisture can cause lasting problems. But when the water that enters your basement is from a sewage backup, those problems can be so much worse.
One homeowner who bought a new house in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2021 learned just how bad a sewage backup can get the hard way, when she told WDRB about how her basement has flooded multiple times with the nasty water. Rogerie Jerome told the publication that the water is coming from Louisville Metro Sewer District’s (MSD’s) system.
Now she’s trying to get help covering the more than $10,000 in damage from the most recent flood, along with some way to prevent it from happening again.
Unfortunately, the program MSD once offered homeowners seems to have been cut, which may leave her without any options for future issues.
The First Sewage Backup Happened in 2021
According to Jerome, the first time her sewer backed up was right after she bought her house. “There was toilet paper floating around in the sewage water,” she told WDRB. “When you’re driving around in the West End, unfortunately, that smell was in my house.”
Since she was new to the area, she didn’t know that the backup was coming from MSD’s main system until an employee showed up at her house. She said that they told her about the Plumbing Modification Program and said that MSD would offer funding to pay for her to get a sump pump.
However, Jerome didn’t take them up on the offer because she thought it was just a one-time incident. Since then, she’s realized that the problem was bigger than that, and her basement flooded several more times, including back-to-back incidents on July 11 and 22.
“I believed that my basement was a safe space to leave my diplomas, memorabilia, childhood memories, and belongings that actually came from my father, who recently passed have not gotten ruined,” Jerome told the publication. After the additional issues, she reached back out to MSD to take them up on the sump pump offer, which is when she was told that budget cuts had caused the program to be suspended.
Heavy Rainfall Is Behind MSD’s Problems
According to a spokesperson from MSD, the backup is a known issue, and they were previously working on fixing it through a $50 million investment that will be spread out across more than 20,000 households over 20 years. However, budget cuts caused that figure to drop, and it now looks like they are working with $30 million over five years, with a much smaller scope.
“MSD is prioritizing investments that address the issue at a larger scale, including enhancements to the drainage network, increased underground storage capacity such as the Waterway Protection Tunnel, and other systemwide solutions,” the spokesperson wrote in a statement seen by WDRB.
However, for homeowners who have been impacted by these backups, it’s nowhere near enough to fix the problems that they are experiencing now. As such, Jerome has started a Facebook group to connect with her neighbors who are having similar problems, and she has already met 17 people in the same position.
Whether you’re living in the same community Jerome is in, or simply experiencing a backup of your own, it’s important to stay safe when it happens. According to the Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District, that means staying out of any standing water in your basement to reduce your risk of electrical shock. If you have standing water in your basement, you should call your utility company (or a professional electrician) before entering the basement.
Once you are able to enter your basement safely, you’ll need to wear protective gear, disinfect surfaces, and make sure you’re disposing of anything that could’ve been contaminated by the sewage.
Hopefully Jerome and her neighbors get help soon. Having your basement fill with sewage one time is more than enough, but dealing with this over and over again truly seems like a nightmare.