(Spirit Lake)– With rain in the forecast, the Spirit Lake city council Tuesday took on a topic members are all too familiar with this time of year: sump pumps that are illegally discharging into the sanitary sewer system.
Dean Dodds of the city’s Water Department told the council the additional volume caused by just a few sump pumps discharging into the system can overload it, causing back-ups into homes and bypasses into lakes.
But there’s only one way to make sure sump pumps aren’t illegally connected to sewers. That’s to physically inspect them. The council directed City Attorney Earl Maahs to review an ordinance modeled after one already in place in Lewiston, Iowa, that allows such inspections.
City officials say the ordinance would be part of a two-prong approach toward decreasing the amount of clear water getting into the sewer system. The other is to prevent ground water from seeping into older parts of the city’s sewers by lining them. That will be getting underway soon.
