March 10-16, 2005

city beat

Drown Town

All wet: When heavy rains overwhelmed sewers last August, cars were floating, cats were swimming and manholes were flying on West Thompson Street. : photo from hosmar anglero’s video

Smarting from sewage-laced flooding, Old Kensington residents unite.

by Mike Newall

Last summer, Hosmar Anglero woke to a gurgling sound coming from his cellar. "Can you hear that?" he asked his wife, who shrugged and went back to sleep. Anglero then searched for the source of the noise and screamed when he found 2 feet of sewage in the basement, spouting from a drain like a geyser.

As the tide rose, he ran to the front window. Another scream. Cars were floating, cats were swimming and water was shooting up through the asphalt with enough pressure to send manhole covers into the air. "It was like being inside a river," remembers Anglero, a maintenance man who lives on the 400 block of West Thompson Street. "I thought maybe the house was going to come down."

That Aug. 1 flood, and one that followed on Sept. 28, covered nearly eight blocks running north from Girard Avenue to Master Street and east from Sixth Street to Germantown Avenue. In all, tens of thousands of gallons of sewer water and human waste flowed into the homes of Anglero and the other working-class residents who live in this neighborhood that locals call Old Kensington. Residents say a faulty sewer line running beneath Thompson caused the sewage floods and although they've requested help from both the Water Department and City Councilman Darrell Clarke, they say the problem hasn't been corrected. With spring rains fast approaching, residents fear they'll soon be up to their waists in water.

"Maybe," says Anglero, "we should all buy boats."

Shortly after the first floods, residents e-mailed, faxed and called the Water Department and Clarke, requesting that the sewer line be inspected and, if necessary, replaced. Water Department officials finally responded with a letter on Feb. 1 that read, "Our ability to conduct these inspections in a timely fashion has been greatly impacted by the number of vacancies in our service units and the day-to-day work requests that require immediate attention." Ten days later, they notified residents that an inspection had been carried out and the sewers were found to be in "good condition." The flooding, says department spokeswoman Laura Copeland, resulted from last summer's unusually heavy rains.

"There was just a lot of rain in a short period of time and it overwhelmed the sewers," she says, adding that the Water Department is drawing up plans to better manage flooding caused by storm weather. They encourage residents to call the Water Department's hotline — 215-685-6300 — to report any future flooding.

The response did little to alleviate residents concerns, particularly considering what they'd already been through. It cost Anglero more than $6,000 to replace a heater, boiler, washing machine, tools and other personal items. Michael Myers lost all his DJ equipment, records and a personal computer. Annie Moss spent nearly $6,000 cleaning and refurbishing her father's home. Worse, her father, a diabetic, still has the sores he developed while shoveling the mucky residue of human waste out of his cellar.

"We had 4 feet of water in our streets. How can [the line] be in good working condition?" asks Moss, vice president of Old Kensington Neighborhood Association, a once-dormant civic group that has been revitalized to tackle the flooding issue. "All that letter tells me is that they are not going to do anything further to fix the problem."

At its monthly meetings, the group strategizes on ways to raise the funds needed for an independent sewer inspection. They're also circulating surveys through the neighborhood to gauge the full scope of flood damage. It is not the first time that the sewer line, which is roughly 12 feet in diameter, had caused flooding; in 1991, residents on the nearby 1300 block of Orianna Street successfully sued the city-contracted construction firm that maintained the sewer line for damages caused by basement flooding.

Located just north of Northern Liberties, Old Kensington properties have begun to skyrocket in value in recent years as the neighborhood experiences its first wave of gentrification. (The city itself is selling a lot on the block for $45,000.)

"This is an upcoming neighborhood, a great place to live," says Judy Myers, who suffered $10,000 damage to a home she purchased for $95,000. "The city's just got to take care of this sewer. Every time it rains really hard you get sick to your stomach with worry."