Sewage Geysers Afflicting Baltimore Homes

Toilets are spewing sewage into Baltimore homes and resolving the problem is billions of dollars and a decade beyond reach.

“The problem is a side effect of the city's incomplete efforts to stop sewage from overflowing into streams — despite a court order that it fix the aged system by the end of last year. Sewer rates have more than doubled in the meantime,” The Baltimore Sun reported.

“Sometimes it’s an old pipe that bursts, but mostly raw sewage spills in Baltimore come after heavy rains that overwhelm century old infrastructure, finding its way into not only city streams, but also homes,” CBS Baltimore reported.

Angela Valdez found her basement bathroom filled with sewage three mornings in a row, according to CityLab.

“It smelled about as nasty as you'd imagine, but the sight of it was worse,” Valdez told CityLab. “Brown clumps in brown water... and you think about what that actually is… Yech.”

Valdez is not a one-off. City crews responded to around 5,000 reports of basement sewage in homes last year, according to The Sun.

“Other Baltimoreans have horror stories of sewage rising two feet high and ‘geysers’ of waste spewing from toilets,” CityLab reported. “Some homeowners have described wading through sludge with garbage bags wrapped around their legs to clean their basements themselves. The property damage can run into thousands of dollars — and lead insurance companies to deny claims or even drop policies. And, perhaps needless to say, it’s a health hazard.”

It will take over a decade and billions of dollars to fix the problem. A proposed deal between the city, the Maryland Department of the Environment and the federal government would modify a previous plan. The proposal “sets a timeline for $2 billion in improvements and requires improved public notification of sewage overflows,” WMAR reported.

Under the deal, repairs would not be complete until 2030, the report said.