MILLVALE, Pa. \u2014 Summer is the time of year in which homeowners proudly show off their thriving tomato plants on social media.<\/p>\n
Not Dawn Kucharski.<\/p>\n
The Millvale property owner\u2019s vegetable garden sprouting from her sidewalk is entirely unwanted, fertilized by human waste from a broken sewer pipe leading from her home.<\/p>\n
Kucharski believes the problem began two years ago, when People\u2019s Gas and Pittsburgh Water did a joint utility project under the road next to her home and encountered her sewer line, which ran in an unusual direction and wasn\u2019t marked properly before the work began.<\/p>\n
Since then, she and her husband believe sewage has been building up underneath the road, culminating when they dug under the sidewalk to investigate the source of what they thought was a water leak.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we opened up the sidewalk, it was like a geyser of sewage just kept pouring out,\u201d Kurcharski recalled.<\/p>\n
Over the past few months, she\u2019s struggled to get it fixed. She said two different plumbers traced the leak source to the area where Pittsburgh Water did work on its main line.<\/p>\n
Pittsburgh Water said its contractors determined the break to be downhill — next to a People\u2019s gas line, closer to the house — and pulled a construction crew from the site that was there to fix the break.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have not found evidence that the water main replacement work or installation of the valves caused damage to the sanitary sewer lateral,\u201d a Pittsburgh Water spokeswoman wrote in a statement.<\/p>\n
Kucharski said the plumbers quoted her $25,000 to do the work herself.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Pittsburgh Water] would say, \u2018Nope, it\u2019s not our problem. It\u2019s the gas company.\u2019 We got ahold of the gas company: \u2018Nope, not our problem. It\u2019s PWSA,\u2019\u201d Kucharski said, using the water company\u2019s old acronym. \u201cIt\u2019s been hours, days, weeks, months on the phone with different people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kucharski said she just wants the work done, and done soon: she\u2019s worried that, now that the sidewalk has been turned into an open sewer pit, the pit will freeze in the winter, backing up the sewage into her house.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe road has been, I guess, our septic tank for the past year and a half,\u201d she mused. \u201cOur tenants can\u2019t even sit on their porch because the smell.\u201d<\/p>\n
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