A broken sewer line led to a torn up street in Seward.
Residents on the north side of East Seward Street reported the sewer backing up in their homes in early April, said Tim Richtig, water/wastewater superintendent.
While the street and homes are listed as a private development, which means residents are responsible for their own maintenance, the city chose to make the repairs in this case, he said.
Richtig said the sewer line was a four-inch pipe made of clay tile, which was broken in four to five places. When crews sprayed high-pressure water down the pipe, “we got a bunch of mud,” he said.
The breaks meant the sewer line from five or six homes on East Seward Street wasn’t draining properly.
The 360-foot section of pipe was replaced with six-inch PVC pipe, Richtig said. The project began around Easter and, with rain days, took about a month to complete. Richtig said they did the project live, which meant no one was without sewer service during the work.
Mel Aldrich, city street/transportation and recycling superintendent, said the residents of East Seward Street were very patient during the work.
In order to repair the sewer pipe, crews had to remove a four- to five-foot strip of the brick street, which is a labor-intensive process, Aldrich said.
Once the pipe was replaced, crews filled in the subgrade, poured a four-inch concrete slab, added a one-inch layer of sand and then put the bricks back on top. Sand was then used to fill in the spaces between the bricks.
The bricks on East Seward Street are smaller than the bricks in the downtown streets, Aldrich said. The East Seward bricks are six pounds, compared to the 10-pound bricks downtown.
