Sewage Water Filling New Brunswick Homes' Basements

New Brunswick, NJ - It's been happening lately every time there's a heavy rain: The basements of homes near Talmadge Street and Lee Avenue in New Brunswick flood with water mixed with untreated human sewage, MyCentralJersey reported.

Residents made the complaint at the Aug. 3 New Brunswick City Council meeting. “It's not once, it’s not twice, it’s been more than every time we get some constant rainfall,” Nilsa Rodriguez, 27, said, according to the article. “If you actually go visit that intersection right now, the whole block smells like fecal matter.”

To make matters worse, residents say this is not the first summer this has happened.

“This is the fourth time since I've been here 16 years, we've addressed the matter,” Jacqueline Jones told the Council Aug. 3. “I had a mom knocking on my door (and saying): ‘can you take my child.’ Because she lived in the basement. I said I can't take your child, because my house is as well smelling of feces.”

New Brunswick's sewer problems are well known to anyone who lives in the city, and a city spokeswoman said the issue this time was with the current manhole covers, which she said were letting too much rainwater through. Those manhole covers have been replaced and the Engineering Department blasted out all the sewer drains in that area with a high-pressured hose, after they found "significant debris" in them.

“We're going to keep a really close eye on them during the next heavy rainfall to see how all of that behaves," said the city spokeswoman.

Read the original story here.