We live in dread when the drains back up. Many of the City of Santa Ana's sewers and drains are so old that we cannot be sure whether the blockage will be cured with the plunger, by calling our the local drain router, or by having our drains replaced. The big worry in older parts of the City is the sewer laterals. Laterals are the offshoots from a main trunk sewer, running down the middle of the city street, to the edge of the property line – approximately at the curb. Drains from a property connect into a lateral.
When my drains blocked up in December 2000 we were told by City engineers that we would have to pay for any repair work to the lateral since it was not City responsibility. Note: digging up the street, with all the charges for making sure you do not accidentally rip up fiber glass cable and other services, is definitely not cheap!
However, after a careful reading of Santa Ana's City code I discovered that the City has misled residents for years about ownership of sewer laterals and thereby dodged its responsibility to pay for the work. If my repair work had entailed lateral repair work I would immediately have challenged the City in court on the basis of the City being in violation of its own City Code.
Nobody doubts that the City needs more money to deal with sewer decay. But to argue the case on a false premise is of grave concern to the community and may have considerable legal implications.
At a Floral Park neighborhood meeting in the summer of 2001 a City representative outlined the case for the new sewer charge. When pressed to give re-assurance that the new money would not be siphoned off into other projects he gave assurance that it would not. However in my conclusions I still wonder whether the current budget for sewer repair may yet be adjusted, thereby giving the lie to that assurance. We will have to see.
Lastly, I am an enthusiastic resident of Santa Ana. I support the City in so much of what it does. I am prepared to believe that it does not know its own City Code (duh!). And if it can be shown that my case is wrong, I will be more than glad to withdraw.
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This letter arrived with City water bills in December 2001. It outlines the case for a new sewer rate structure, but is in error in its assertion that sewer laterals have always been the responsibility of residents.
Santa Ana City Code clearly establishes that the City has always had ownership and responsibility for sewer laterals.
Conclusions1. The Municipal Code appears to provide for alternative methods of financing city services. (Sec. 20-2) 2. The Code lists what it considers to be municipal services and explicitly includes laterals. Laterals are the offshoots from a main trunk sewer, running down the middle of the city street, to the edge of the property line – approximately at the curb. Drains from a property connect into a lateral. 3. If the City cites laterals as municipal services than it accepts ownership for them. They are not the liability of the property owner. 4. The Code provides for the City to find ways to fund maintenance of its services – which includes laterals. The details of that financing are immaterial. Responsibility is established. 5. From this it necessarily follows that property owners are not liable for the maintenance of laterals. This City not only accepts ownership of the service but explicitly states its responsibility to find ways to fund the maintenance. 6. Elsewhere, the code describes the rules and regulations for connecting new drains into existing sewers, but this need not concern us here. 7. It may be true that the City cannot afford to pay for the maintenance of every decayed lateral which affects outflow of sewage from a property, but that does not remove liability. At the present time the City refuses to pay for maintenance of laterals, and I believe it does so illegally. The fact that many residents have been obliged to pay for work to their laterals my be an issue that should be tested in court. 8. The proposed sewer maintenance supplement is probably necessary – but the community needs to understand more about “alternative method of financing certain public and private capital facilities and municipal services” and should know whether this provision was considered when the City adopted is new sewer rate structure in September 2001 to deal with sewer decay. 9. The proposed sewer supplement is now in force, with the pledge that every dollar so collected shall be applied to sewer repair/replacement. But the community still needs assurances that the $2.3 million currently budgeted for this work will not then be diverted to other services. If the current budget IS diverted then to that extent the sewer tax does, in fact, get applied elsewhere by a crafty piece of book-keeping.
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