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Just Shelley Weather

Climate change and sewers

By my rain gauge yesterday, we had 3.98 inches of rain, and that’s not accounting for what fell after Midnight.

We’ve had heavy rains before, but this one seemed to be a particular problem in the O’Fallon area.

Last night we tried to flush our toilets, and they weren’t going anywhere. The seal on one was leaking (good thing we hadn’t fixed the drywall under those pipes yet). We called a plumber.

Poor guy came out, popped the top on the clean out, and up came sewer water.

He could run a camera, but we all thought the issue was the main was over-taxed with the rain, and our sewage just couldn’t enter the flow. Our system is over-taxed anyway, because one town’s force main dumps into our gravity main, at the manhole in my neighbor’s yard.

Anyway, I got my wish this AM: we could flush again. I’ll still need the plumber to come back, replace the O ring on one toilet, just in case.

Everyone keeps saying the same thing: they’ve never seen weather like this before. Not during the summer, not this fall.
Welcome to climate change.