Outage Downs Pumping Station; Sewage Leaks Reported at Homes

Tony Jordan got a rude awakening Wednesday morning when he learned sewage had leaked into a storage area in his basement.

"The leakage seemed to come in where the sewer lines leave the house through the foundation," Jordan told Patch in an email. “We will probably end up throwing out many items. … We will need the floor cleaned and the sump pit cleaned out as well." 

Jordan, of 7 Stanton Court in Lake in the Hills, wasn’t alone. 

A handful of residents in western Lake in the Hills and in Huntley experienced issues with sewage leaking through their foundations after the power at a pumping station went out, said Ross Nelson, district manager for the Lake in the Hills Sanitary District.

Nelson said late Wednesday afternoon he only received five reports of sewage leaking through the foundation and no serious reports regarding flooding or standing sewage/water in basements.

Nelson believes plumbing issues or defects in the sewer service lines at the homes, coupled with the pumping station outage, led to the issues.

“It seems like there was something that was not right with their own sewer service that they never would have known about under normal conditions,” Nelson said.

It’s unclear why the power went out at the pumping station, located near Miller and Lakewood roads, but whatever caused the outage also blew out the backup power line that is supposed to kick in during an outage Tuesday evening, Nelson said.

It also deactivated the alarms meant to notify the sanitary district, leaving the pumping station out of service until 9 a.m. today.

“It was not functioning overnight,” Nelson said.

Nelson estimates the pumping station services about 200 homes and about 1 million gallons of water could have pushed through over the period of the outage. The pumping station helps move the water along to the main wastewater treatment plant, 515 Plum St., Lake in the Hills. 

Without the pumping station working, pressure can build up in the pipes and could have caused sewage to leak into homes where there were faulty sewer lines, Nelson said.

Homeowners served by the sanitary district are “responsible for the sanitary sewer service line from the house up to and including the connection to the sewer main,” according to information on the village of Lake in the Hills website.