BALTIMORE — Baltimore homeowners are facing the devastating aftermath of sewer backups in their homes, and in some cases, they are not receiving any assistance.
Howard Wrightson III’s basement flooded after brown, dirty water poured in from the toilet and shower.
“That is the pile of crap that's all waste-trash pretty much. My speakers, the crib that you see in the box right there,” said Wrightson. “Ugh, every time I come down here, I just get so enraged. Many, many, many thousands of dollars just for no reason.”
Wrightson experienced health and financial setbacks after recently suffering from a stroke. He felt like he was finally on the path to recovery then this happened.
“Instantly, I had no income for like a year,” said Wrightson. ”We were just coming out of that, you know, and everything was really starting to go better and everything was calming down and then boom,” said Wrightson.
The incident happened on January 24 at around 1:30 a.m.
“My daughter came up the stairs, who lives in our basement with my granddaughter, and said, ‘Dad there's water everywhere,’” said Wrightson. “I went into the bathroom and there was water coming out of the toilet with such force that it was like two to three inches above the seat.”
And from his shower as well. He frantically called plumbers, and the county and city Departments of Public Works.
“Four to five hours that the water poured in, just kept pouring in and I reached out to them constantly just kept calling them and they kept saying we know, we're coming,” said Wrightson.
The Randallstown homeowner estimates the damage to be around $50,000. As the owner and operator of the county’s water supply system, Wrightson was instructed to file a claim with the Baltimore City Law Department, however, it was denied. Baltimore County work orders indicate that his basement was flooded by a water main break that went into his sewer line. A City claims investigator said there was not sufficient evidence to show that the Department of Public Works did not handle the repairs to the water main in a timely manner.
“So, no assistance with the cleanup and absolutely no money?” asked WMAR-2 News Mallory Sofastaii.
“They gave us nothing. They came, they visited, and they left,” Wrightson responded.
Wrightson also learned this his elderly neighbor sustained damage to her home.
“She came to the door and said, ‘Howard, did you have any problems with your basement?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, of course I did.’ And she said, ‘Oh, my God, there's like eight inches of water in my basement,” Wrightson recalled. “I went down and shut off the electricity to my furnace system and hot water heater. She didn’t, so all of that stuff got destroyed. So as bad as mine was, hers was probably worse.”
Wrightson's case is not an isolated one. The city has a long history of sewer overflows and backups. It first entered into a consent decree with the federal government in 2002 after violating the Clean Water Act. But actions taken by the city to comply with the consent decree, including closing relief valves, is believed to have caused additional sewage backups. The city created two programs to support residents experiencing these backups when it renegotiated the consent decree in 2017.
“Those assistance programs aren't doing everything that they need to do,” said Jennifer Kunze, the Maryland Program Coordinator with Clean Water Action.
Kunze explained that the conditions are too restrictive, and reimbursements are capped.
“It's a cap of $5,000 reimbursement. It only covers your cleanup and disinfection costs, not any property damage that you incur, and it's restricted to only the sewer backups that are caused by wet weather events,” said Kunze.
And while county residents are served by city water, these programs don’t apply to them, and the county doesn’t have similar programs.
“If your sewer backup happens during dry weather, if there's a clog in the mainline under the street, if there's a water main break that pushes drinking water into the sewer line and causes sewage to backup, then you can't get assistance through this program. And actually, the majority of sewer backups happen during dry weather,” said Kunze.
Expanding the program would require additional funding, but Clean Water Action believes there is a way to do this without raising water and wastewater rates. Kunze stressed that the city has an obligation to expand these programs to help homeowners facing these issues.
“It’s really Mayor Scott's responsibility, the buck stops with him. And Mayor Scott needs to step up and say, no, we can and we will expand these programs to cover everyone who needs and deserves this help,” she said.
Sofastaii asked the Mayor’s Office and the Baltimore City Department of Public Works if there are plans to expand these programs to cover dry weather events. The department did not answer that specific question. Instead, a DPW spokeswoman wrote:
"Baltimore City has made enormous progress assisting residents impacted by sewage backups caused by wet-weather rain events. The Baltimore City Department of Public Works administers the Building Backup Expedited Reimbursement Program (BBERP) and Sewage Onsite Support (SOS). These programs are available to residents who reside in Baltimore City and are impacted by sewage damage caused by a capacity-related wet-weather event resulting from heavy or sustained rain. BBERP is a regulatory-driven program under the City’s Sanitary Consent Decree, a legal agreement between the City of Baltimore, federal and state regulators to address sanitary overflows from the City’s sewer collection system. DPW’s long-term plan is to replace the BBERP with the Sewage On-site Support (SOS) program, which offers services through third- party contractors to clean and sanitize basements for any qualified wet-weather events."
“I'm not trying to gouge anybody. I just don't want to be devastated by this. It's just not fair,” said Wrightson.
Wrightson is currently seeking an attorney to help him fight the city’s decision. There have been a number of settlements relating to sewer backups including one in 2018 where the city awarded a homeowner $172,000.
Wrightson is also filing a claim with the county's law department. The county DPW spokesperson said their initial investigation shows that it was water, not sewage that entered the basement, which would make it a city issue, however the County Claims Division will still conduct its own investigation.
To learn more about the city’s sewer basement backup reimbursement and clean-up programs, click here.
Homeowners can also file a claim with the Baltimore City Law Department or the Baltimore County Law Department.