Malta City Council hears of residents sewer problems, plans new flushing routine

It was a wild week of waterworks for the Malta City Public Works Crew over the past week or so.

On Thursday evening a water pipe burst near the intersection of South First Ave East and South Seventh Street East. Water from the leak traveled all the way down South Seventh East, passed the Mustangs Football Field and into a drain. On Friday, the City Works team worked a 13-hour day digging to the broken pipe, shutting off around a dozen different valves and releasing pressure by opening up a fire hydrant while they diligently worked on fixing the problem (see story on 1A)

But on Tuesday at the Malta City Council Meeting, water problems of a different type were discussed as two different Malta residents attended the meeting to see what could be done about the sewer backing up into their finished basements.

One of the residents explained that the most recent time this happened in their home, in early October, that the problem was just as stinky and as hard to clean up as ever. He explained that when the issue occurs its seems as if the problem comes from the sewer becoming plugged in the same spot each time. He explained that if the sewer has backed into his basement that it has also backed into the other couple’s basement as well. When the sewer backs into the resident’s basements, cleaning crews have to come in and suck the raw sewage out, the carpets must be cleaned and many items have been ruined.

“We never know when this sewer is going to back up,” the resident said. “We are waiting patiently to see what we can do about this problem. Right now it has devalued our homes.”

Earlier in the meeting, City Works Director James Brown reported that while he was on a call fixing a curb stop at local residence, when he got a call about the sewers backing-up into the two families homes. He and his team went to the location to clean and flush pipes in the area and unclogged the pipes in question, some near the Phillips County Hospital.

“We did notice that when we flushed from the hospital that there was shop towels and paper towels and they do not disintegrate,” Brown said. “They will hang up on stuff, and then other stuff will hang up.”

Brown explained that regular toilet paper, when disposed of through the sewer, will dissolve in about three minutes whereas paper shop towels and the like will not dissolve at all.

“So now we are thinking that we should flush that line once a week,” Brown said. Brown said that there are other lines in the City of Malta that are flushed by the City Works team on a weekly basis and adding another line to be flushed wouldn’t take much time and the line would be added to a new maintenance routine.

“I can’t guarantee that this will fix the problem,” Malta Mayor Shyla Jones said, “Because there is no guarantee when it comes to the sewer and water. We are going to do what we can to make this better and our plan right now is to flush (the line) weekly to try and prevent this.”

Mayor Jones said that she would have a letter written and delivered to the hospital asking that they not flush non-biodegradable items down the commodes in the future, though she added that it is not 100-percent certain that the waste from the hospital – which is four blocks from the homes -- is causing the problems. Director Brown also explained that outlaying sewers run slower and items that aren’t biodegradable get hung up and cause clogs.

“This flushing program will help,” he said.

During the Public Works portion of Tuesday night’s meeting, Director Brown said that his crew is busy sweeping streets and cleaning leaves. He said the crew recently had to dig up and replace a hydrant near West Side Self Service. Brown also informed the City Council that he and Jim Truelove recently attended Water School and both felt the experience was a good one (each of the two city employees is required to take one credit worth of schooling per year which equates to about 10-hours of schooling.)

Toward the tail end of the Meeting, Malta Trails President Laura Pankratz presented the City of Malta a wooden plaque – shaped as the outline of the state of Montana with footprints walking across it – for all the support the city has given to the trails program.

Mayor Jones also told the City Council that a couple of loads of cardboard where shipped out of the City Shop and that she is working on getting a new company to take more of the cardboard away sometime in the fall.