In the early morning of Jan. 24, Janet Dellorto was called by her son to the basement of her Alameda Drive home in Aurora.
Her son lives in a basement apartment, and he had slipped and fallen on water gushing from a toilet onto the floor.
It was the beginning of a more than month-long situation still unresolved for Dellorto and 31 other homeowners on Alameda, Sapphire, Almond, Richards and Shady Lane, mostly in the Indian Trail West and Greenfield subdivisions.
The houses experienced a sewer backup into their basements of varying degrees, but all having raw sewage – Class 3 water as identified by the Environmental Protection Agency containing bacteria. The sewage destroyed items it flooded, damaged floors and walls and forced a clean-up that is still going on, residents said.
“We just feel like we’re in limbo,” said Dellorto. “We want to know when we can start putting our lives back together.”
The situation still is under investigation by the Fox Metro Water Reclamation District in cooperation with state and federal agencies, both the Illinois and federal Environmental Protection Agencies, according to Karen Clementi, Fox Metro district manager.
What is known at the moment is that a 30-inch interceptor sewer line owned by Fox Metro, running along the southeast corner of Indian Trail and Orchard Road, was clogged by a “massive amount of grease,” according to Clementi.
The large grease ball backed up sewers that feed into the interceptor which then backed up smaller lines throughout the West Side. Fox Metro owns and maintains all sewer lines in its district of 15 inches and larger; any smaller sewer lines are owned and maintained by the municipalities, in this case the city of Aurora.
When the incident first happened, some residents called the Aurora Fire Department, which could do nothing about it, and the city of Aurora.
Ald. Carl Franco, 5th Ward, whose ward covers the area involved, said city crews were involved in unclogging the interceptor in an emergency situation, but it was quickly turned over to Fox Metro.
“We sent crews to clean up,” Clementi said. “We’re still working on it.”
She said it affected 32 houses, although some homeowners are still just now calling Fox Metro to report being affected.
Homeowners reported crews coming the same day as the backup to begin cleaning and assessing what happened. Fox Metro has sent people out to assess damage, and Dellorto said Fox Metro has said they want the builders they hire to do repairs.
Another Alameda Drive resident, who wanted to remain anonymous, said they were able to make claims through their insurance, but that “not everybody has coverage for a backup.”
That resident said she had a Barbie doll collection with dolls from the 1960s, as well as a Barbie dream house, that had to be thrown away.
“Almost the entire contents of the basement had to be thrown out,” she said.
Clementi said the ongoing investigation is centering on what created the clog. The interceptor handles sewage from a number of businesses, including a number of restaurants around that intersection. Factor 75, also called Hello Fresh, has a large commercial food preparation facility at the intersection.
The Fox Metro Board of Trustees met recently in closed session to discuss the incident and what might happen going forward. The board did not adjourn into open session to take any kind of action.
“We have no other problems like this anywhere else in the district,” Clementi said.
Residents have reported that since the incident, they almost daily see trucks throughout their neighborhoods checking the sewers.
For one affected resident on the West Side, the situation reminded them of the Flood of 1996, when she had eight feet of stormwater in her basement. This time, it was only about 18 inches of water, but it was sewage.
“I don’t know if that was worse, or this,” she said.
As the investigation and the clean-up continues, the resident said residents are wondering “if there is an after-effect.”
“What about selling the house in the future?” she said. “How does this affect anything like that?”
slord@tribpub.com