Corroding sewage lines health concern

KAHULUI – In 2009, the backlog of repairs to the nation’s public wastewater systems was estimated by the American Society of Civil Engineers at $390 billion. But the private side of the systems – the lines from the public collection pipe back to the bathroom – is also deteriorating. The bill could be equally daunting. Steve Allen, owner of The Drain Surgeon in Kahului, said his employees see the problem “every day,” often disturbingly close to the ocean. Cast-iron pipes, above and below ground, corrode, sometimes in less than 20 years. “The pipes are rotting right at the beachfront,” he said recently at the Kahului offices of his plumbing business. Nobody routinely inspects for leaks, he said, adding that there is no legal requirement to do so. And, it’s unclear who (if anyone) is responsible for reporting them. State Department of Health Deputy Director Gary Gill said “everybody” should report leaks, but there is no enumerated legal duty for professionals to do so, the way doctors and nurses are required to report suspected child or elder abuse. Allen said he feels an obligation to help ensure the health and safety of the public. But that doesn’t mean he reports his customers to the state health officials, although once he told one he would if the property owner didn’t fix a pipe that was leaking raw sewage into the ocean. The owner decided to pay to fix it. Fines for violating the federal Clean Water Act by introducing sewage into navigable waters can run $25,000 a day. Gill said fines are not common, but they have been imposed. (The Health Department is responsible for enforcing the federal regulations.) Replacing decayed pipes for a single-family house, in an uncomplicated situation, costs $5,000 to $20,000, Allen said. But the looming cost for thousands of home and business owners will be huge. At $10,000 a house, fixing a thousand homes will cost $10 million. In some areas, like Kailua on Oahu, Allen’s Plumbing is finding “house after house after house” with failed systems. Gill said he thinks Allen has “uncovered a significant issue” concerning the probable extent of the problem of leaking private sewer lines. Allen has made a poster that he takes to public meetings, which asks, “Who is responsible?” “The property owner,” Gill said. People don’t know their systems have failed, or, if they do, “until the toilet backs up, they don’t want to do anything about it,” Allen said. Just because corrosion has eaten away a sewer pipe doesn’t mean there is a bad leak. Dave Taylor, now director of the county Department of Water Supply, worked for years as head of the county’s Wastewater Reclamation Division. He said that, in some soils, sewage encases the hole where the pipe was, solidifies, and the waste continues to flow where it was directed. Not always, Allen said. At a West Maui restaurant, his crew found a “cavern” under what was left of the pipe, and raw sewage was going straight to groundwater, he recalled. Allen has been astonished at how bad the situation is. “I cannot believe what we are seeing,” he said. Apartment buildings within 100 or 200 yards of the ocean, with dozens to hundreds of units, have been found with the connection to the county wastewater system completely interrupted, he said. The same situation can be found in private homes. Allen’s employee, Richard Hart, was cutting into a concrete pad at a house in Happy Valley to get to a line that remote inspection had shown was deteriorated. “I couldn’t understand why my saw blade was binding,” he said. When he finished cutting out the 3-foot-square piece of concrete, he found out: It dropped down more than a foot into a hole where raw sewage had washed out the soil. “Right over a drinking water aquifer,” Allen said. There’s no telling how long some of these situations have existed. At a 36-unit apartment in Kihei, Allen said he believes raw sewage was leaking into the soil “for nobody knows how many years.” Public systems are regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Health. There is no regular oversight of what happens on the private side of the pipes, at least not after the inspection required for a certificate of occupancy for new construction is completed. Allen said he believes that failed systems should have their certificates of occupancy withdrawn, since they are no longer in compliance with the county plumbing code. Gill said complaints about failures on the private side of county wastewater systems are referred to the plumbing inspectors of the county. “If the property is not sewered, we would follow up on the complaint because in many cases the complainant is not sure what is causing the spill,” he said. “Since we would be conducting the investigation, we’d take the necessary enforcement action in those cases.” Dean Higuchi, of the Honolulu office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said the federal agency has no authority over private systems. It is concerned with public systems, and it forced Maui County to spend many millions upgrading its public system in the 1990s because of chronic spills. Many were blamed on clogs of food, oil and grease from commercial kitchens, which formed plugs in collection lines. A county ordinance requires commercial kitchens to install grease traps. There was much grousing, Allen said, about the expense, but it turned out to be “a double win.” Spills are much less frequent, and the saved grease is used by Pacific Biodiesel to make renewable fuel. Allen said he told restaurateurs that they should consider food, oil and grease recovery as a cost of doing business. “You produce it, you are responsible for it,” he said. He said building owners should realize that replacing plumbing is a routine cost of owning the building. And one that may come up well before the overall structure needs major repairs. Allen suggests that a homeowner whose cast-iron pipes are 20 years old, as a person concerned about the environment, should consider an inspection. The cost is $300 to $500, using remote sensing technology. People on cesspools are home free. Their sewage just goes into a hole in the ground, where, if all is well, natural reactions clean up the sewage before it gets very far. (The Health Department is on a campaign to close all large-capacity cesspools – defined as any with more than one family using it – but six years past the deadline, the state is still encountering old cesspools.) Technology is coming to the rescue of homeowners and commercial building owners, Allen said. Plumbers have known how to reline big pipes without digging for about 20 years, and in the last eight years, the equipment has become able to cope with small-diameter pipes. There are various methods. A sleeve of fabric can be rolled into the pipe, then impregnated with (a very expensive) resin that sets up a rigid barrier that resists hydrogen sulfide, which eats pipe. Another method is to force through a kind of metal projectile with a hydraulic ram. This breaks up the old pipe and pushes it aside, simultaneously pulling a new line into its place. Allen said he believes that a leak test – air or water – should be required when a house is sold, but as far as he knows, San Francisco is the only city that requires this. “If I were a homeowner, or if I were a Realtor, I’d want it done,” he said. Allen’s Plumbing does only repair work, no new construction, and Allen said he cannot keep up with the decayed pipe work. More than once, he has had an owner decline to fix pipes. That could be expensive. Gill said fines can only be imposed if the department can show willful negligence. An owner who corrects a plumbing failure once it is discovered would probably not be a tempting target for fines. Enforcement actions “can be complicated,” Gill said. The department can issue notices of violation, which can lead to fines; but it also uses warning letters to obtain compliance. Allen had to invest many tens of thousands of dollars in new equipment (two sets of everything for his businesses on Maui and Oahu), and the business is not without risk on his side. If a remote repair fails and he has to dig to fix it, that’s his cost. It isn’t just pipes in the ground that fail. Allen has cases where high rises have decayed pipes all through the building. It used to mean jackhammering concrete to get at them, but at least sometimes now the relining can avoid that. A European study found that the lifetime of cast-iron sewage pipes, which had been believed to be 50 years, is often only half that. Plumbing codes have begun to allow plastic pipe, which should last longer than cast iron, but Allen said the baby and construction booms of the 1950s and ’60s have bequeathed the nation millions of buildings whose plumbing is in danger of failing. Allen said he has seen a building only 16 years old with all its pipes rotted out. Repeated calls to address blockages are a sure clue that pipe failure has occurred, he said. He said much attention is being paid to county injection wells, where the effluent is treated to remove most of the waste. But, “I just get a little bit bothered about the lack of awareness of the untreated, raw sewage that’s going into the ocean. There’s no comparison,” he said. * Harry Eagar can be reached at heagar@mauinews.com.