Everett woman paid sewer bill for 23 years, unaware she had septic tank

EVERETT — After a record cold snap in January, Leri Harper checked her basement in southeast Everett.

“It was just starting to warm up and pipes were starting to leak,” said Harper, 69. “I wanted to make sure I didn’t have any broken pipes.”

All five rooms in her basement were flooded.

When the plumber she hired, Bruce Melton, came to inspect the damage, he called the sewer connection “weird.” It was above ground, transitioned from a normal cast iron pipe to a concrete pipe then to a 6-by-4-inch PVC fitting. All unusual.

Two months later, Harper literally has a journal filled with notes titled: “Sewer/Septic Saga.”

She now believes her cobbled-together plumbing — with a septic tank that then connected to the city sewer — was the result of “negligence and dishonesty” by a city employee 50 years ago.

Harper wonders if there could be others.

To fix the damage and reconnect her house to the sewer, it cost Harper $20,534 from her emergency fund. She plans to file a claim with the city to be reimbursed for sewer payments, as well as the cost to restore and hook up.

City spokesperson Simone Tarver said via email that Public Works had helped with Harper’s expenses by waiving the utility permit fees, as well as the cost of a camera to identify the location of the connection point.

“A City inspection does not mean the City guarantees inspected work,” she wrote. “That work is always the sole responsibility of the contractor and the property owner.”

Tarver said the homeowner or the contractor probably did the least expensive and invasive process at the time and believed it would work.

“In fact, it did ‘work’ for approximately 50 years. The property’s sewer WAS connected to the sewer main. It went through the septic tank first, but ultimately it did connect to the sewer,” Tarver wrote. “This is not up to current codes, however, in this case it functioned for 50 years.”

‘We would have been very scared’

In 2001, Harper bought her house on Yew Street with her late husband, Nicholas. The couple moved from Olympia for work.

“It was the worst house in the neighborhood,” she said. “My husband put in 22 gallons of paint. We tore up all the old flooring and carpeting.”

Still, the view of the Snohomish River valley made it worth it. But knowing the house was connected to a septic tank would have changed their mind.

“Hillsides tend to be unstable,” Harper said. “We would have been very scared of that.”

After a month of renovations, the couple settled down.

For years, they paid their sewer bill, currently $83 a month. Harper’s husband died in 2011 at the age of 64, leaving her alone in the house.

Harper had been thinking about her future. The house is too big for her and Kona, her 9-year-old Yorkshire terrier. Rather than moving, she was thinking of converting her basement into an apartment and renting it out. Last year, she retired from her job at the Social Security office in Seattle, but had some money for the conversion.

Then, the flooding happened.

Harper first called Everett Public Works. After a city inspector, Brad Olhava, looked at the main, he said there was no backup at their end. Harper called Melton, who asked the city to lend him a special camera to inspect the inside of the sewer lines. Melton said this kind of camera can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“There was a lot of convincing that I had to do,” the plumber said.

The city agreed to loan the camera.

A few days after Melton inspected her house, Evergreen Sanitation pumped the septic tank for five or six hours. According to inspection records, 40 inches of scum and 18 inches of sludge had accumulated.

The state Department of Health recommends pumping a tank when it accumulates more than 6 inches of scum or 12 inches of sludge.

The camera from the city proved Melton correct. The water was flowing out of the house and into the septic tank before feeding into the city sewer. Only liquid waste left the tank. Solids got trapped.

Melton installed a new pipe, bedded it with gravel, backfilled the trench with soil and filled the septic tank with 900 gallons of gravel — a method to safely abandon a septic tank.

‘Just have to roll with it’

In Pam Hurst’s 18-year career as a local real estate agent, she has only encountered one similar case.

A couple years ago, a friend’s septic system “blew up all over their front yard,” Hurst said. That’s when Hurst’s friend realized she was connected to a septic tank, despite what the previous owner had told her. It had been six years since her friend had bought the house and she was not billed for sewer services.

Hurst recommends homebuyers check the sale disclosures given by the seller and the property descriptions on county website. Sometimes, she said, county documents say it’s “unknown” whether there is a septic or sewer connection.

If so, it’s important to tell the house inspector. If the inspector can’t figure it out, homebuyers should get a sewer scope.

The Snohomish County Health Department maintains a database of as-built septic system records.

The records can be accessed at snohd.org/159/As-Built-Records

The database doesn’t mention Harper’s septic tank.

Melton got the original sewer permit for Harper’s house, dating from 1973.

“There’s two points you have to verify as an inspector. One, is that it is connected to the building, and two, is that it is connected to the city sewer,” he said. “There really should be no way of getting around that.”

Tarver said she didn’t know what the inspection process was like in 1973. Currently, the city inspects the entire line “from the exterior of the house to the connection to the sewer system,” she said in an email. “The primary focus is the connection point where the private line connects to the City system.”

As expenses mounted, Harper reached out again to Public Works.

According to Harper, the department told her they had “no liability” for the city employee’s work.

The city, she added, told her she “had better get busy hooking up to city sewer right now.”

Jennifer Gregerson, the city’s director of governmental affairs, wrote in an email that, when the sewer is outside of the public roadway, homeowners are responsible for maintenance, as per city code.

Harper has asked neighbors about their sewer systems. They said they hadn’t had any problems.

“I have to look at it as ‘things happen.’ The older I get, I just have to roll with it,” she said. “I just hope it doesn’t happen very often.”

Aina de Lapparent Alvarez: 425-339-3449; aina.alvarez@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @Ainadla.