My house and the whole neighbor hood have all the perimeter drainage dumping in the sewer system. A few years ago, the town went around and check everyones basements, and anyone who had sump pumps draining to the sewer had to disconconnect and reroute to the exterior or pay an extra $50 a month on the sewer bill.
Luckily, mine had been piped directly to the sewer underneath the floor with no sump pump, just a floor drain, so it was ok to leave it.
Yeah, I always figured it was more a money issue since the storm water isn’t passing through the meter but is going into the sanitary system. $50 seems a bit excessive but not surprising, I suppose.
This is also why municipalities don’t want RVs dumping into the system. You could get water at the campground and bring it home and put it into their system. Of course, they don’t mind me filling my tank at home and dumping at the campground.
At least in my area, the utilities cite it as an unnecessary burden on the treatment plant, since the water in a sump is typically ground water or storm runoff. They don’t want all of that water overloading the treatment plant and/or requiring premature upgrades or capacity increases.
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That, and as Matt stated, the fact that you’re paying a fee to use that sewer line, and that fee is based on the water bill.
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And to add to that… they specifically do not want to treat storm/groundwater that is basically already clean!!
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Tell that to the fish in the Chesapeake bay. The storm runoff contains so much fertilizer it grows tons of algae which kills of the fish because it consumes all the oxygen in the water. I never understood those neighbors that fertilize their lawn. Such a waste.
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Most/all the houses built in Portland (OR) in the early/mid1900s had combined sanitary and storm sewers which resulted in a bunch of sewage in the rivers during times of heavy rain. They’ve taken a lot of measures to correct it and from what I’ve heard it’s been reasonably successful (I hope so considering how much is cost tax payers). Anyway, mixing storm and sanitary water is not always such a great idea. All that being said, the amount of water sump pumps can introduce into a system would seem to be pretty minor compared to what all the gutter/downspouts and general storm drains can but I guess rules are rules.
A few years ago, I was inspecting a house for the daughter of the head of Denver water sanitation. The house had the sump pump discharging into the sewer. Her father shrugged his shoulders at that. I expressed my surprise at his lack of concern. He said that a few people doing it is no big deal. I said, “Probably true, but isn’t code and the city concerned that it would be a problem if everyone did it?” He shrugged again and said “Yeah.”
I always call it out.
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My city has a disconnect program that may pay for a plumbing contractor to re-direct.
When i find them connected i will direct them to the website that has all of the information for disconnection.
Sump Pump Disconnection
To minimize the amount of rainwater entering your community’s wastewater system, MSD offers sump pump disconnection to help you modify and correct improperly installed drainage connections.
The typical 8-inch neighborhood sanitary sewer pipe can become overwhelmed with as few as eight sump pumps connected to the system. MSD’s Plumbing Modification Program pays for a licensed plumber to disconnect the sump pump from the sanitary sewer and redirect the water in a safe and effective way.
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My 2nd Cousin or my dad’s aunt’s house was in Portland. We used to send a lot of time there when I was a kid. I remember they made her disconnect her downspouts from the sewer system and she had to dig a drywell or dry pond to contain the rainwater. Most of the houses on her street were the same. If they did not have a dry pond the water would just run downhill anyway.
I used to love Portland, makes me sick what goes on there now.
Yeah, the city had a program for a while where they’d credit you some $$ on your water bill if you’d unhook. I don’t recall them ever forcing anyone but they definitely encouraged it. I heard a rumor that they stopped the program because a bunch of people got flooded basements due to not channeling the downspouts away from the house (I know, hard to believe the homeowners didn’t do it right).
And yeah, the city is a MESS. I’m actually in town to do a few things and just can’t believe my eyes when I drive through the city. Here are a couple pics from a building in my family that I’m somewhat responsible to care for. It went vacant 10/1 and it took about a week to get the fencing up. Unfortunately, that’s all the time needed.
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Wow, that is really sad for you and the owners.
When do you think the local leaders will admit that these new policies are a failed experiment?
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It’s ironic that this thread segued from a literal conversation about sewers to a figurative conversation about Portland.
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When people stop blindy electing the leaders based on which can be the farthest left… So, never 
It’s actually pretty sad… this property is worth roughly half of what it was +/- 5 years ago. Granted, there are some other factors such as interest rates and general economic slowdown but the Portland-specific problems also play a large role.
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Never.
Oregon is a mini-California, and Portland is the new SanFrancisco.
These are only a half step away from Washington State and Seattle.
I lived in Vancouver, WA for 19 years, which is just across the Columbia River from Portland.
We got the overfow from Portland, so I’ve seen it first hand myself.
I left the PNW in 2006. The handwriting was on the wall.
I was torn leaving back then, but so glad I did in hindsight today.
Unfortunately, Minnesota has gone to hell in the same manner, and in roughly the same timeframe.
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Related:
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We own one of those houses @mfellman described - a 1909 SE Portland bungalow - and I’m seeking advice on discharging the groundwater from the “dirt floor” sump in our garage. It’s clear that the original design was to pump this water into the main sewer line, which literally runs through and wyes over the sump well:
I would like your expert opinion on whether it would be proper, or advisable, or legal, or otherwise a good or bad idea to solve my problem by re-connecting my pump discharge there, the problem being, groundwater fills the sump dozens of times a year and overflows into the garage, which is “trying to become” a proper (dry) workshop.
I assume that there is, or was, or must be, some sort of backflow prevention device inline there. The two licensed plumbers I’ve had look at this have not seemed to want to touch it, and I haven’t personally investigated the wye section’s integrity.
Thoughts, suggestions, questions? Thanks for reading and thinking about this with me.
p.s. we know the previous owner (who we rented from before buying the house 4 years ago) had the downspouts disconnected from the sewer lines. The inspection showed a ruptured (original clay) sewer line (on the other side of the house en route to the street) which we had properly fixed before buying. At that time we had the downspout re-connected to the new sewer line. We’ve been fighting basement water ingress little by little ever since, observing and documenting patterns, and experimenting with patching various ingress points that had been neglected, and things have massively improved over the years. The garage is the final frontier, thus this message.
If it is groundwater, I would just route the sump discharge to the yard, making sure to get away from the structure a good distance.
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Thanks Ryan. this has been our backup plan but this solution has been sidelined bc of the difficulty and complexity discharging to a place that will not (quickly) flow back in forming a cycle for the pump. I’ll follow up with some more photos since I wasn’t allowed more than one attachment in my posts as a newcomer…