Move to St. Louis!!
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- blaw0
On the other hand, you could live around here where they do force you to bring that exact situation up to code, at a cost of $4,000-$8,000, like it or not.
Believe me, I'm sympathetic to your situation and completely understand why you are upset. You are, however, pissed at the wrong people.
- So who should I be mad at? The people who laid the pipes 85 years ago? Seriously, any ideas?gramme
- If a pipe breaks, or a wire shorts, or the roof leaks, who do you blame? You just take it on the chin and move on.blaw
- But isn't the city partially to blame for being lax with plumbing codes? STL is seriously unionized, you'd think they'd be a bit more vigilant.gramme
- ...they'd be a bit more vigilant.gramme
- mrdobolina0
SewageToday
- duckofrubber0
It's always good to see our 1% tax in action. God bless this city. Of course, we do have the cleanest drinking water in America, so drink up?
And I too own a grandfathered old home in the city, and I'm just counting the days till I get to discover ankle deep sewage in my basement. Hopefully later rather than sooner...
Good luck sir and give em hell.
- gramme
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for the follow-up, however you're about a week late in responding...we had a haz-mat situation in our basement (gallons of raw sewage erupted from our basement drain during the storm that night). We contacted MSD at 9:30 on the 22nd, they said they would send someone out ASAP. Apparently "ASAP" for them meant 2 AM. They claimed they were unable to give us an ETA. It became abundantly clear that the city sewage staff is seriously understaffed and poorly organized. I called three times and got the same runaround; the dispatcher told me his team had no phones and thus there was no way I could find out when they would arrive at our house. I was under the impression that they would send a city-contracted plumber, which is why I stayed up late waiting for them. At around 2 AM I heard a truck in my alley. I ran out and asked if they would come in to check out our problem. They informed me that was not their job. They checked the sewage main and claimed there was nothing wrong there, that the problem was with our plumbing and that we had to get our own plumber. No one had informed me of this protocol before. I called the MSD dispatcher back; he did not apologize for the situation.
We had a plumber come out early the following morning. They cleared the clogged pipes but wouldn't touch the basement situation. Long story short, we had to clean it up ourselves. It turns out that our storm drains, kitchen and bathroom (including sewage) all go to the same pipe in our house. I have been told by our plumber that this is not up to code. No wonder we had a backup – the sudden storm flooding the downspouts, the ground was already wet, and when you throw in some standard-level sewage we had a mess on our hands. It seems this situation is very common in older homes in the city. The old houses just get grandfathered in, while new construction is required to separate storm, sink/shower and sewer water. I don't expect the city will ever attempt to rectify this and bring everyone's plumbing up to code, due to the astronomic expense.
I tell you all this to let you know that we were seriously disappointed by the city's delayed, unprofessional, uncourteous and irresponsible system. I have been telling everyone I know how poorly the city handled this situation. Is this seriously what I pay taxes for??? MSD knows they have me in their pocket like it or not, and so they obviously don't care about customer service or prompt action.
What exactly do we pay you people for? I've been all over the country, and never have I seen such an ass-backwards municipal system.
No need to follow up on the haz-mat problem, my wife and I cleaned up the shit ourselves.
Matt Steel