More sump pump inspections for Batavians

Batavia soldiers on in its campaign to get people to stop discharging sump pumps into their sanitary sewers.

It intends to inspect 30 homes this summer, on Towne Avenue and Smith Court, on the southwest side of town.

The city is asking those homeowners for permission to send an inspector in to their homes to see what kind of connection they have. Those who have illegal connections will receive a formal notice to correct the matter. If they do not make the correction, the city could charge them with a building code violation.

But the city has never had to do that, said Gary Holm, public works director. In 2008 and 2009, the city inspected 204 addresses and discovered 19 illegally connected sump pumps. Many of those have since been corrected.

A typical neighborhood sanitary sewage pumping station is designed to pump up to 150,000 gallons a day, according to Holm. Some sump pumps are capable of discharging as many as 40 gallons per minute, or 57,600 gallons a day.

"That's why we target sump pumps. That's what people don't realize," Holm said.

If a sanitary-system pipe becomes full of storm or groundwater, sanitary sewage may back up in to basements through floor drains and plumbing fixtures such as toilets.

Technically, city code requires anybody who lives adjacent to a storm sewer to connect their sump pumps to that sewer. People may also connect the discharge line to a detention pond or a waterway, but not an open ditch. City workers will help them figure out a solution, Holm said.

Landowners have 90 days after receiving a notice of violation to fix it before being fined. The fine is $500.

It was not uncommon for years to have sump pumps drain into a home's sanitary-sewage disposal lines, especially in areas that did not have storm sewers. But federal law banned the practice in the early 1990s. And since 1997, new homes have been required to be built with overhead sanitary sewer lines in the basement.

Batavia stepped up inspections following complaints about flooding in 2008 after heavy rains.