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Takin' the Blog for a Walk

Join Waukesha resident Brien Lee and his blog, Sir Fido, as they explore the city and report on the interesting things they find.

Email Brien at howlinblog@yahoo.com.

must be Friday the 13th

By Brien Lee
Friday, Jun 13 2008, 12:35 PM

I usually get the blame for things that go wrong around here. If something should leak or break ten years after I repair it, it's got to be my fault. Car not running right? Yep, it's me. Not enough snacks / bread / milk / money... you guessed it.

I don't always agree that I'm responsible indefinitely for something I may have fixed years ago, but with the sewer flooding our basement this morning for the fifth time in a week, I will accept most of the blame... this time.

I'm upset that tens if not hundreds of thousands of tax dollars were spent a year and a half ago replacing sewer pipe on my street. (We were informed it would fix the flooding problem)  And I'm upset that I didn't just plug up the floor drain before last night's rain. Last week plugging it worked OK, though water poured in through a different orifice anyway. I thought checking the basement throughout the night would be enough. I finally got some rest after the heavy rain let up. Unfortunately for us, the backup didn't happen until after the rain stopped. This morning I found the largest puddle yet; about a quarter of the basement, but still not as bad as many others in the area.

I'm mad at myself for not remembering other times when the backup started after the rain stopped. We could've prevented so much just by plugging the drain once we heard how bad the weather was going to be.

Comments

Steve Bukosky   

One of the things that I always thought when I bought my house is that I'm so much higher than the Fox River that I'd never have to worry about flooding.  I didn't consider that being downhill of the Northview area would present a problem due to undersized drain pipes. My question is if this is an engineering mistake or not. Personally, I'd stop the building of the new fire station and spend the money to get this drainage problem fixed. Our neighborhood has been here since the 1960's and I've seen the intersection by my house flood several times since I've lived here. Our area deserves better.

June 14, 2008 12:19 PM

Brien Lee   

I'd leave the fire station alone because it's needed (even if we can't afford to staff it) and, like everything else, would cost so much more to build in the future.      There could be a design problem, undersized pumps or whatever, but when it comes down to it this was an unusual stationary storm system. Fortunately, in normal storms we don't have problems. I would really like to know how all that rainwater is getting into the sanitary sewer though. Probably wouldn't be as many problems if there weren't leaky pipes and illegal hookups.

June 17, 2008 9:04 PM

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