Batavia to offer sewer conversion aid

You head to the basement to throw a load of towels in the dryer. At the bottom step, however, a sickening feeling comes over you: there’s standing water on the floor.

And so a nasty chore jumps to the top of your list: Suck up the water and schlep soaked items up and out. Then call a plumber, who tells you the sanitary sewer line out of your house is clogged, causing water to back up through the floor drain. Or maybe the city’s sanitary sewer failed and sewage backed up, or cracks in its lines allowed stormwater to infiltrate, again leading to a backup.

An overhead sewer system for basement fixtures can prevent damage from such occurrences.

The Batavia City Council decided the city should encourage people who have had such problems to convert their systems to overhead, and voted Oct. 3 to pay half the cost, up to $3,000. The program will start with the 2012 budget, which takes effect Jan. 1. The money, $9,000 to start with, will come out of the sanitary sewer portion of the budget.

Applicants will have to provide proof of a backup, such as photos, an insurance claim or receipts from a cleaning company. A city building inspector or public works employee will inspect the home to see if it qualifies, and to conduct an inflow-and-infiltration inspection. If clean water is flowing in to the sanitary system, such as from an illegal sump pump connection, the homeowner will first have to fix that, at their own cost, before being eligible for the overhead sewer grant.

Applicants must get price quotes from three contractors. They will be free to use whatever contractor they wish, but the city will base its reimbursement on the lowest quote.

Once the work is done and passes inspection, the resident will receive the reimbursement.

The houses eligible for this are likely homes built before the 1980s, said Gary Holm, the public works superintendent. After that, building codes required overhead sewers, with ejectors, instead of gravity-based systems. Waste from basement fixtures drains to an ejector pit, where the ejector pump then sends it up to the service line.

Several towns in the area offer grants and loans to homeowners for overhead systems. Geneva pays half, up to $3,000; St. Charles, half, up to $2,500; and Elgin, up to $10,000, half as a loan and half as a grant.