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Stink seeps in to City Hall
By Mary Madewell
Published January 15, 2009
There’s a stink at city hall, but it has nothing to do with public policy.
For about a month now, sewer gas has inundated Paris City Hall, 107 E. Kaufman St., coming from underneath the facility where raw sewage collected in the bottom of an elevator shaft.
“There’s nothing fishy here,” City Manager Kevin Carruth said. “It just stinks.”
At Monday night’s city council meeting, participants were told not to use upstairs rest rooms but instead to take a trip to basement facilities, where the odor is particularly strong.
Carruth said employees first began noticing the smell about a week before Christmas.
Hopefully the ins and outs of 80-year old sewage lines have all been detected and repair work, which has been on-going for about a month, will be completed this week.
Tracking plumbing lines has been difficult although sewer cameras have been used in an attempt to find a blockage.
“Plans from the renovated fire station (now council chambers) showed lines going east,” Carruth said. “As digging began, workers also found lines going west toward First Street.” There are no plumbing diagrams from construction 80 years ago.
The city manager said each time workers “got a bucket of dirt something new came up.”
To trace sewer flow, dye was used in all fixtures.
But from one particular fixture, no dye made its way outside the building. When workers discovered the second sewer line, which is lower than the first, that information led to the discovery of a missing link to the underground maze.
“What we think happened during renovation when the elevator was installed, someone connected a sump pump to a wrong line,” Carruth said. That caused recirculation of sewage and a backup, which over the years collected underneath the elevator.
“Sewage was going round and round, keeping it stirred up,” Carruth said.
The manager said work should be finished and 1st S.E. Street reopened Friday.
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