A city resident has a beef with the city’s public works department and a word of caution for other homeowners.
Forest Lawn resident Larry Hackman said the city’s sewer flushing program in the spring caused a large expulsion of water to burst from the toilet in his basement. The burst of water was high enough and violent enough to cover all of the walls and floor of his bathroom.
When he stepped into the room to clean the mess, Hackman slipped on the wet floor and fell, injuring his back and foot.
When he complained to the city, he learned that the public works department receives several complaints a year of such backflow incidents. He’s angry that the city would continue to use the same techniques.
“They’re not changing their procedures that I think put people in harm’s way,” Hackman said.
“I could have been brain dead. I could just have easily have hit my head on the toilet or on the ceramic tile and had neurological damage.”
The city runs its sewer main flushing program every spring, which involves clearing hundreds of kilometres of sewer line each season, said public works director Glenn Tompolski.
St. Albert uses the same techniques as any other municipality, which involves a flusher truck that runs a high pressure washer unit that turns at very high speed within the lines to clear them of grease and debris.
Tompolski wouldn’t talk specifically of Hackman’s complaint but said in general the process results in a few incidents of toilets bursting each year.
“It doesn’t happen often but it does happen,” he said.
Tompolski stressed that the sewer lines running from homes to the sewer mains clear after each use, so the water involved in these cases isn’t sewer water, just that which sits in the toilet. These incidents happen when the cleaning process generates enough air pressure in the pipes to move the toilet water.
“If your toilet is closed, then the water in your toilet just bubbles up and hits the top of your toilet. It’s a little dirty and that’s really the extent of it,” Tompolski said. “There’s generally no damage as a result of that because it’s just water.”
The best defence is to keep the lid shut. That way it will get wet and not the entire bathroom, he said.
The city doesn’t offer compensation to homeowners because there’s generally no real damage, Tompolski said. And he’s never heard of anyone being injured as a result.
“This might be the first one that I recall,” he said.
Hackman complained persistently to the city and his complaint wound up with the city’s insurance company, which responded by letter.
The letter stated that the city wasn’t liable because it had followed its procedures. It cited section 530 of the Municipal Government Act, which states that a municipality can’t be held liable for damage caused during inspections or maintenance.
Hackman feels the city is hiding behind the act rather than addressing the problem.
“There’s an act out there that says that they don’t have to take ownership of it, which to me seems ridiculous,” he said.
This wouldn’t fly in the oil and gas industry, in which he’s employed as an engineer.
“People would be fired for that if they did it again knowing that it had the potential to cause injury,” he said.
“If the city claims that they get at least three calls a year about it, to us that would be considered to be a very high risk.”
