Homeowner concerned about pothole leaking sewage in Birmingham neighborhood

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. ( WIAT ) — A viewer in Huffman contacted CBS 42’s Your Voice Your Station teams with concerns about a pothole on his street that is leaking sewage. The health department has given him a warning, but no one can seem to help him get it fixed.

When we first talked to Dan Harris in October, the pothole wasn’t all that big. There was water around it, which we’ve now learned from Jefferson County officials is sewage.

Now, it’s grown so much to be quite the obstacle in the middle of Zellmark Drive.

“Right in here they said is where the sewer was broken,” Harris said. “It just kept getting worse and worse.”

Harris has been dealing with the hole near the end of his driveway since last summer.

“We started just by calling the road people and the pothole people, but they quickly said it was something leaking under the road,” Harris said.

The City of Birmingham says the problem under the ground needs to be fixed before the road can get repaved. This brought in the Jefferson County Environmental Services Department, which deals with sewer issues.

A county spokesperson informed us that they visited the site twice on Aug. 21 and 22 for a high-priority problem.

“Our neighbors were beginning to complain,” Harris said. “Even people from other streets were stopping by and asking have you told anybody about this big pothole? Because they were worried about their cars.”

After running tests and cameras underground, the county determined the main was not causing the problem and that it was the homeowner’s responsibility.

The main dispute has been about five feet of pipe that runs from the property to the middle of the street.

“It’s definitely a sewer line because they put some dye in the toilets and flushed it and the dye came up in the middle of the street,” Harris said.

Because it’s sewage, that got the Jefferson County Department of Health involved.

Clinton Woods is the Birmingham City Councilor for Huffman helping to contain the mess.

“It’s grown so it’s a pretty high sense of urgency to get this resolved,” Woods said. “I can say the governments all involved have really worked hard to identify and get solutions to the table. Now we’re working with the homeowner just to get it resolved, finally.”

The Jefferson County Department of Health sent us a list of all visits to the home – including that it issued a notice of violation on Dec. 18 to get the sewer lateral repaired. The department has followed up five times since then, with the latest visit showing no sewage present and the hole filled with dirt.

“It can be frustrating at the process and how long things take but this is one that we definitely take very seriously, and we are close to a resolution,” Woods said. “There’s a lot of things that happen in the city that are not the city’s responsibility, so you have to work with the owners, the property owners that are responsible and we’re dealing with people. In my role, we really try to work hand-in-hand with people to get things done.”

Harris said after months and months of phone calls he found out that they have to get a special plumber who has the appropriate license to cut into the ground and repair it.

The health department said it has been monitoring the situation and that there is no public health threat. An official said that Harris could face legal action if the problem is not fixed.

Harris said that if insurance doesn’t cover the problem, it could cost him between $8,000 and $15,000 to get the problem fixed.

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