MILLVALE, Pa. — Summer is the time of year in which homeowners proudly show off their thriving tomato plants on social media.
Not Dawn Kucharski.
The Millvale property owner’s vegetable garden sprouting from her sidewalk is entirely unwanted, fertilized by human waste from a broken sewer pipe leading from her home.
Kucharski believes the problem began two years ago, when People’s Gas and Pittsburgh Water did a joint utility project under the road next to her home and encountered her sewer line, which ran in an unusual direction and wasn’t marked properly before the work began.
Since then, she and her husband believe sewage has been building up underneath the road, culminating when they dug under the sidewalk to investigate the source of what they thought was a water leak.
“When we opened up the sidewalk, it was like a geyser of sewage just kept pouring out,” Kurcharski recalled.
Over the past few months, she’s struggled to get it fixed. She said two different plumbers traced the leak source to the area where Pittsburgh Water did work on its main line.
Pittsburgh Water said its contractors determined the break to be downhill -- next to a People’s gas line, closer to the house -- and pulled a construction crew from the site that was there to fix the break.
“We have not found evidence that the water main replacement work or installation of the valves caused damage to the sanitary sewer lateral,” a Pittsburgh Water spokeswoman wrote in a statement.
Kucharski said the plumbers quoted her $25,000 to do the work herself.
“[Pittsburgh Water] would say, ‘Nope, it’s not our problem. It’s the gas company.’ We got ahold of the gas company: ‘Nope, not our problem. It’s PWSA,’” Kucharski said, using the water company’s old acronym. “It’s been hours, days, weeks, months on the phone with different people.”
Kucharski said she just wants the work done, and done soon: she’s worried that, now that the sidewalk has been turned into an open sewer pit, the pit will freeze in the winter, backing up the sewage into her house.
“The road has been, I guess, our septic tank for the past year and a half,” she mused. “Our tenants can’t even sit on their porch because the smell.”
Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts.
Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW