Sewage

An insurance company that paid a claim to a Danville business that was damaged by sewage has filed a lawsuit against the city. According to a complaint filed last week in Boyle Circuit Court, Farm Bureau Insurance alleges that the city of Danville failed to properly maintain a sewer line near Danville Christian Bookstore and Music Center. The city's negligence and carelessness ”caused the sewer to back up into the business, located at 200 Hightower Road behind Super 8 motel, on April 15 and damaged the building and its contents, the complaint alleges.

HARRODSBURG - The City Commission has adopted an enlarged area of the county for the new sanitation district for Mercer County. The district was formed last year as part of planning taken on by Mercer County Judge-Executive John Trisler and citizens and officials throughout the county. There will be no cost to the city for the enlarged boundary and the city had already enlarged the boundary of its flow area during recent improvements to the sewage collection and treatment system, said Laura Gilkerson and Bob Smallwood, engineers with GRW Inc. The city will be paid for any additional treatment of the sewage by new customers, but will not be responsible for constructing new lines leading from customers to the treatment plant.

Since 2002, the Kentucky Division of Water has recorded more than 200 reports of overflows at pump stations in Boyle County. When a pump station overflows, untreated wastewater bubbles up from manholes and either goes into a creek or flows on the ground. More than 95 percent of the overflows were caused by heavy rainfall. The extra water gets into sewer lines and proves to be too much for the pump stations to handle. As a result, the rainwater and sewage comes up from manholes.

STANFORD - A Stanford man has filed a lawsuit against the city after sewage allegedly overflowed from a manhole, ran into his pond, and sickened and killed his cattle. Donald Sears of 210 Harmon Heights filed the lawsuit May 29 in Lincoln Circuit Court claiming that in late June 2006 the Stanford Water and Sewer Commission allowed the lid of the sewer manhole to remain off. He claims raw sewage ran into his fields and pond, killing 29 head of cattle and sickening 54 more. Sears claims he had warned the commission over a period of two years about the lid not being secure, but no one responded to the warnings.

PERRYVILLE - The sewage cleanup schedule of several homes in Perryville has changed a little, Danville City Engineer Earl Coffey said. On Jan. 29, a tree root clogged a sewer line that backed raw sewage into nine homes. A 10th home may be affected, according to production supervisor Shannon Joyce at Serv Pro, a fire and water cleaning and restoration business from Lexington that is handling the cleanup. It was initially thought that eight homes were affected. Coffey said a crew planned to perform a thorough inspection of all lines in the city, both visually and with a rodding instrument, to ensure the tree root did not move somewhere else in a line, which could potentially cause another back-up.

Dear Editor: Sunday's article regarding the proposed sewer for the southern bypass/Gose Pike area of Boyle County didn't adequately elucidate all the dynamic issues involved with this potential project. It was commendable, however, that for the first time the primary motivation for this proposal was revealed. The mayor and the city commissioners openly admitted that this was a project simply to sponsor further growth and commercial development. Judge-Executive Tony Wilder recently suggested in a meeting with our Gose Pike Neighborhood Association that it was a construction proposal, hopefully funded by grants, out of concern for the health of people in Junction City who are continually being exposed to potentially harmful raw sewage.

LANCASTER - J.T. and Heather Bullock, the couple forced to leave their Ruston Drive house because of sewage that ruined their basement Nov. 15, plan to ask for funds Monday at the Lancaster City Council meeting. The meeting will be at 7 p.m. City workers determined earlier this month that the incident occurred when a sewer pipe that serves about 40 homes in the area had blockage in it caused by rags that may have been caught in a crack in the pipe. J.T. said nobody was sure how the rags got there, but the manhole uphill from the Bullocks' home was full of sewage, about 13 feet deep.

Dear Editor, I live in the county between Danville and Junction City and my concern involves the Toomb's Curve pump station which carries the sewage from Junction City to Danville's treatment plant. There is a significant need to get this sewer problem corrected as the sewage bypasses and overflows that discharge into the Ball's Branch at this location, which has been a problem for years. Not only does this pose an unhealthy environment, it's degrading to the homeowners around it. I also feel that it depreciates our property values.

The time has arrived and you are ready to build your first home or you have worked and saved for the dream home you have always wanted. There are so many things to consider such as location, schools, water, electric, gas, and the list goes on. Unfortunately, one of the most important utilities is often overlooked until problems arise! If your home is not connected to sanitary sewer, every home or mobile home must have an approved onsite sewage disposal system. These sewage disposal systems are permitted and inspected by the Lincoln County Health Department.

HARRODSBURG - The first job of a Mercer County Sanitation District may be to take over and then replace the private sewage treatment system in Bright Leaf subdivision. That was the good news for about 30 residents of the subdivision that gathered Thursday night in Young's Park to learn of plans for a rural sanitation district. The meeting began with Larry Catlett of the subdivision's property owner's association telling his fellow residents that the connection of the neighborhood's sewer lines to the Harrodsburg waste water system is likely to be sooner than he had thought.

An insurance company that paid a claim to a Danville business that was damaged by sewage has filed a lawsuit against the city. According to a complaint filed last week in Boyle Circuit Court, Farm Bureau Insurance alleges that the city of Danville failed to properly maintain a sewer line near Danville Christian Bookstore and Music Center. The city's negligence and carelessness ”caused the sewer to back up into the business, located at 200 Hightower Road behind Super 8 motel, on April 15 and damaged the building and its contents, the complaint alleges.

Aquila International, a Versailles-based aquaculture firm, began stocking fish Monday in lagoons at Winchester Municipal Utilities’ old wastewater treatment plant on Van Meter Road. Each lagoon received around 350 koi, which will help clean and prepare the waters for commercial species. Aquila plans to raise paddlefish and hybrid striped bass for food products and stock for ponds. WMU replaced the facility in 2008 with the new $25 million Strodes Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant.

By Michael Broihier State Representative Danny Ford and State Senator Ed Worley visited Stanford Wednesday morning with Acting State Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Director Vernon Brown to present a check representing $5.3 million in grants and loans to the City of Stanford to improve its sewer capacity. Stanford Water and Sewer Manager Alan DeShon said that the project will increase the city's sewage handling capacity by 50-percent and improve the safety of sewage treatment.

If you've ever flushed a toilet and rinsed anything down a sink, odds are that you haven't given a second thought about where it all ends up. But for Jessamine Creek wastewater supervisor Van Bugg and the employees at the wastewater plant on Shun Pike, it's something that they think about all the time. "Every toilet that is flushed, everything that goes down a sanitary sewer drain ends up at the wastewater plant," Bugg said. Unlike their counterparts at the water plant, Bugg and company are into bacteria.

LANCASTER - Despite repeated attempts to compromise, J.T. and Heather Bullock were unable Monday to convince Lancaster City Council to help them restore their home. The Bullocks, their 2-year-old son and their dog were forced to leave their home Nov. 15 because of sewage that ruined their basement. After city workers helped stop the spewing sewage, Jim Daugherty, the city's insurance adjuster, determined that the damage was caused by the city's customers, so he chose to decline insurance.

LANCASTER - J.T. and Heather Bullock, the couple forced to leave their Ruston Drive house because of sewage that ruined their basement Nov. 15, plan to ask for funds Monday at the Lancaster City Council meeting. The meeting will be at 7 p.m. City workers determined earlier this month that the incident occurred when a sewer pipe that serves about 40 homes in the area had blockage in it caused by rags that may have been caught in a crack in the pipe. J.T. said nobody was sure how the rags got there, but the manhole uphill from the Bullocks' home was full of sewage, about 13 feet deep.

LANCASTER - After being forced from their home of six years because an insurance adjuster wouldn't cover the cleanup of sewage in their basement Saturday, James "J.T. " Bullock and his wife Heather are looking for help and a second opinion. J.T. was watching college football upstairs Saturday afternoon in their Ruston Drive house in Lancaster when Heather noticed the basement toilet began spilling over with water. They used towels to sop up the liquid, but it continued to spill, turn to brown, and filled their basement.

Take over four miles of pipe, 18,000 cubic yards of concrete and 220,000 construction man-hours. Add that with nearly 15 years of work from local officials, engineers and utility employees and pour in about $25 million. It's all been part of the community's long-term effort to build Winchester Municipal Utilities' new Strodes Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant - the largest public improvement project ever undertaken in Clark County's history. Coinciding with WMU's 50th birthday, efforts culminated Friday when about 200 officials and residents gathered on Van Meter Road to celebrate the plant's formal dedication and honor the work of hundreds who have contributed to the project.

A tip from a concerned citizen brought The Interior Journal to Lincoln County Fire Station No. 1 last week after torrential rains lashed the area. According to the caller, the station, on U.S. 27 near Wal-Mart, floods every time there is a significant amount of rain. With the flooding comes what appears, or rather smells, to be raw sewage from either the station's septic or a nearby business. Asking not to be identified, firefighters clearing the flooding with brooms and squeegees said that the flooding occurs every time it rains.

PERRYVILLE - Residents of homes affected by a backed-up sewer line met Wednesday with Danville and Perryville city officials to discuss details of the cleanup. On Jan. 29, a tree root clogged the line, forcing raw sewage into nine houses. Danville City Clerk Donna Peek and City Manager Paul Stansbury said officials at the meeting answered any specific questions that residents had about their homes. Peek said the cleaning crew has finished sanitizing and cleaning the houses.