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Correct Connect
Whether your home is connected to the sanitary sewer or a combined sewer, it's important for you to have a Correct Connect.
Each household or business that redirects stormwater out of the sewer helps prevent sewage from backing up into our basements or overflowing into our waterways.
Are the downspouts from your roof connected to the city sewer? What about the sump pump keeping water out of your basement?
If a downspout or sump pump is connected to the city sewer, it is taking up space needed to carry sewage to our treatment plants. These incorrect and possibly illegal connections can cause sewage to back up into your basement or overflow into our rivers and streams.
Incorrect connections cause problems.
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Illegal connections cause sewage to
back up into basements and streets
| Our sewer system doesn't have unlimited capacity. In areas with separate sewers, rainwater should flow to storm sewers and sewage to sanitary sewers. But sometimes downspouts and sump pumps are illegally connected to the sanitary sewers, adding more flow than the sewers are meant to handle. In a neighborhood of 200 homes it only takes six to eight sump pumps working full time in wet weather to cause a backup into basements, streets or our waterways.
When sanitary sewers are overloaded, they can back up into our homes, businesses and streets.
Overloaded sewers also may overflow into our rivers and streams, especially in neighborhoods with combined sanitary and storm sewers. More than 6 billion gallons of contaminated, untreated sewage flow into our neighborhood waterways each year.
Even though improvements to our sewer system will help reduce the amount of sewage flowing into our waterways, we still need your help. If we can redirect some water away from our sewer system it will put us that much closer to cleaner rivers and streams.
Follow the links below for more information:
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