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City of Ann Arbor SSWWEP - Citizens Advisory Committee Coordination — City of Ann Arbor

2.66 -C- The initial SSOE CAC report listed concerns for periodic maintenance and inspections for the sump pump equipment. Is this or will this be done by the City?

Posted by Lori Byron on 21 Dec, 2013
Category: Category 2 - about potential recommendations

Frank Burdick’s Log Number: 15
Submitted by: Burdick log
Category (1,2,3): 2
Status: Closed
Estimated date to address: N/A

Q. The initial SSOE CAC report listed concerns for periodic maintenance and inspections for the sump pump equipment. Is this or will this be done by the City?

A. Periodic maintenance and inspection of a sump pump is considered part of normal home ownership and maintenance, and is not performed by the City.

Comments

Frank Burdick on 20 Jan, 2014:

Question #75 from Frank Burdicks log describes the comments from a citizen who was part of the the initial pilot FDD program.  This question #75 does not appear to be in Basecamp.  I could not find it using the Search Tool or by scrolling through Basecamp.  I makes me question the effectiveness of Basecamp.  Too many issues appear to have either been lost, or are certainly buried in Basecamp and not properly distributed.  

Below find a comment from the Survey that is obviously from the same Citizen who helped generate question #75 above.

I am requesting a formal response from  C. Hupy regarding the statement below that the FDD program was supposed to only be a stop gap program. Was this citizen mis-informed are we being mis-informed about these or other many issues, now? 

15. I was part of the pilot installation. A battery backup would have been useful. Have some issues with overflow around air gap, as mine discharges into a 20 foot long underground pipe and thence into a rain garden -would guess some animal(s) have built a nest in the discharge line. Leaks do not seep back around foundation. Installer never finished the tile around floor drain and sump - would have been nice to have that done. Otherwise have same pump, runs fine, while I can suppress the noise and transmitted vibration, I like to hear that the pump is running vs. not. I still cannot understand my neighbor’s issues - while on the Task Force (Morehead rep.) I dealt with three poor installations, but never heard of anyone thereafter having issues with backups and only one incident of the pump causing a clear water problem (discharged into a gravel bed next to the foundation ... short circuited into footing drains and pump could not keep up). Seems to me that a lot of my neighbors expect sumps to handle serious water seepage issues that have nothing to do with sewer backups and that they were and are part of the stormwater and sanitary sewer overflow problems, no sump pump should run more than a few minutes an hour due to rainfall - any that do need further investigation to see why. The idea that a water pooling in backyards and flowing up against casement windows has anything to do with FDD or can be resolved with FDD is almost like a witch hunt! Maybe the stormwater program will wake people up, especially if they look at the scope and magnitude planned - but should be sobering to think that w/o the FDD the previous floods would not be mitigated for another few years with large public works that have yet to be approved and funded - the FDD was always intended as a low cost stop gap solution that avoided digging up streets and making major system changes - too bad that message did not get out before groups like a2underwater started disseminating misinformation and council did their squeaky wheel response. At this point someone in authority needs to make a public statement backed by real data not anecdotes that establishes what, if any, connection there is between the FDD and recent flooding. Good engineers and engineering efforts have been disparaged and maligned. CDM may have problems getting future work with the city."

Frank Burdick on 20 Jan, 2014:

A current member of the SSWWE CAC was also on the SSOE Task Force in 2000 and 2001.  What insight could this member bring to this issue?