Editor’s note: An earlier version said the sewer relining has been going on “for months” but it’s been going on for several years.
A neighborhood in Waban is dealing with quite a mess—a sudden swamp and accompanying rats and snakes—after the city relined sewers there, and neighbors want answers.
“We can no longer be in the yard because of the putrid smell,” Patrick Nuzzi, a retired police officer who lives on Edgefield Road, said as he stood in his driveway, just a few yards away from the new unwanted swamp.
The flood that never left
The city has been relining sewers for several years now. The process involves inserting epoxy-covered tubing into pipes to repair or prevent cracks and leaks.
“Prior to that, with a drastic rain storm or after a bad winter, their yard on a regular basis would flood from the property lines behind them all the way up to their bulkhead,” Nuzzi said as he pointed toward his neighbor’s back yard.
That neighbor whose yard the swamp starts in was not available to speak, but others gathered outside and confirmed Nuzzi’s account.
In the weeks since the sewer relining in that neighborhood, Nuzzi said, the flood has come and has stayed. And it spread to other yards on their street.
When Nuzzi runs his sump pumps at the property line next to the swamp, the swamp recedes a little, but it quickly fills back up, indicating the yard is so saturated with water that there is a leak in something somewhere.
But on Annawan Road just off of Edgefield Road, a massive swamp has suddenly appeared in people’s back yards. Two feet deep, the swamp is now host to an array of wildlife, including snakes and rats.
And in the Nuzzi’s neighbor’s yard on Annawan Road is a large tree—taller than all of the nearby homes—that is now sitting in two feet of water and will likely rot and fall over eventually.
“In the past, they’ve had trees come down because of the saturation of weather,” Nuzzi said.
“When it rained, it’s my contention that the sewer lines were a conduit to keep the water table at bay,” Nuzzi said. But once the pipes were relined, several neighbors noticed their sump pumps were never shutting off.
“So the water table is now out if control. It’s way too high,” he said.
Nuzzi said the city’s Water Department and Sewer Department have come and examined the situation. The city has also hired an independent engineering group that has surveyed the yards for elevation.
“So they’ve been on top of it as far as that goes, but I’m pumping out in the morning and I’m pumping out in the afternoon, thousands of gallons of water that’s coming into my yard from the swamp,” Nuzzi said.
Deputy DPW Commissioner Shawna Sullivan said she hadn’t heard about the issue and doesn’t know the details of it but said water overflow can happen after sewer relining.
“Sometimes when we do eliminate groundwater from entering the sewer system, the groundwater has to go somewhere, and usually it’s somebody’s yard,” Sullivan said.
Wild animals and health concerns
The water is bad enough, but the hazards it brings with it make the situation much worse.
For starters, the swamp-filled backyards are now loaded with rats. And following the rats are the raccoons.
Nuzzi had set traps to catch the rats. But then the raccoons showed up, and he has videos of rats destroying the traps and eating the rat bait.
“They’re eating the stuff like it’s caviar,” Nuzzi said.
And there are snakes—lots of slithering snakes.
Nuzzi said he contacted the city’s Health Department, which he said urged him to use caution around the animals but told him he’s on his own.
The backyards can’t be mowed or landscaped in any way, because there’s a swamp now, and that’s made the wild animal population in the swamp water explode.
The city has information about how to deal with welcome wildlife on its website.