Unusual sewer layout found in Wakefield

By CHARITY SMITH

[email protected]

Wakefield — Wakefield residents living in the Plymouth Location have some challenging sewer repairs ahead. City manager Rob Brown informed the council during its regular meeting on Monday that a sewer backup in one property had led to the discovery of an unusual and complicated sewer layout for the district.

Brown explained to the council, during his city manager report, that after a backed up sewer had been cleared from one property, the neighboring property immediately begin to have a sewer problem. This caused the neighboring property to have a flood in the basement.

“That person wasn’t happy,” Brown said.

It turns out the sewer lines in that area were run 16 feet directly below the homes, rather than in front or behind them. This makes it too far down for city equipment to reach, Brown said. Complicating the issue is that the sewer lines from each house are met with T-joints. This makes it impossible to use traditional devices to clear the lines, Brown said. He further said the line going from the manhole on the street to the sewers meets at a right angle, which prevents city workers from using their camera equipment to better assess the situation.

According to Brown the city has a policy of not doing sewer work on private property. He said it appears that the sewer line going beneath the homes is “one big private sewer.” However, the city is sympathetic to the situation, and Brown, along with city staff, are trying to find a solution.

The council once again tabled a decision dealing with a problem with local street names to allow city staff more time to provide further insight on the situation. The issue is that many of the streets have similar names and this causes difficulty for emergency services to get to the correct residence in a timely manner.

“We’re still working on it. I think weather made it really kind of difficult for our guys to get out and do their thing on that as they were doing snow removal and plowing,” said mayor Dale White. “We are aware of it. We’ll get working on it and hopefully before end of summer we can finalize this.”

The council voted to renew the city’s American Red Cross facility use agreement with some amended wording. The agreement designates the city’s municipal building as the designated emergency operations center, which staff will use to coordinate emergency responses to a disaster. However the city has already worked out emergency responses with Gogebic Medical Care Facility and Gogebic County on the building being a disaster relief center if needed. Therefore the amended agreement will now read “upon request and if feasible” the owners of the building may permit additional use.

“It gives us some flexibility. If Gogebic has to come here and mental health has to come here and we have to accommodate the Red Cross shelter, it’s going to be a cluster,” said Brown. “So it’s best to kind of allow us the ability to pick and choose who comes in.”

Councilman Will Anderson suggested that the city look into updating the kitchen so that it can be used if it is ever needed in the event of a natural disaster. The city has not been able to gain approval by the health inspector to open up the kitchen for use. Brown said the problem is not so much the kitchen, but rather the adjoining staff bathroom that is preventing them from passing the health code inspection. Anderson and the council requested that Brown further look into what the city would have to do to have the kitchen available for use.

The city had a brief power outage in Pike Location over the weekend. According to Brown a low running communication wire on one of the poles was snagged and it jerked the pole. This caused the neutral lines to cross with the positive which blew out some of the power lines. The power outage lasted for about an hour, he said. He said the guide wires had been snapped and have since been replaced and the pole has been straightened. There are still some flags draped on the line, Brown said. He said they cannot be certain how it happened, but they assume that someone had their bucket up and was coming down that way and snagged the line.

The council will meet again on April 25 at 5:30 p.m.