By Barry Porterfield
Staff Writer
May 12, 2008 09:43 am
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Fingers are more than crossed for a Paoli couple and maybe even some town officials as hopes are high a very smelly sewer line problem will soon disappear for good.
The pungent odor has been a nuisance that Gary and Jamie Eastwood haven’t been able to shake from their Paoli residence in the 100 block of East Davis.
Although the problem and the Eastwood’s frustration have been around for a long time — years in fact — a plan could take shape soon that might resolve the whole thing.
“It’s been going on for years, but it’s been really bad for the last couple of years,” Jamie Eastwood said.
“Now the smell is so bad. It’s raw sewage so it’s terrible,” she said.
The Paoli couple has on several occasions paid for work on their own sewer line in an effort to end the smell.
Along the way city crews have also cleaned out the main line a handful of times in the past year.
Each time the offensive and seemingly never ending odor returned in short order leading them to “kind of stay outside a lot,” Jaime said.
“They’ll come out and purge it and it’ll be OK for a while,” she said.
The Eastwoods have come to believe the source of the problem all along has been an old city sewer line made ineffective by age and clogging tree roots.
Adding to the problem is the city’s line is laid out in the home’s front yard.
As a result, when work is done meant to resolve the sewer problem it creates even more headaches with what is essentially a “big mud hole” that never goes away and sometimes emits even more of the sewage smell.
Paoli councilman Bobby Adams believes the problem isn’t the line but the fact the Eastwood’s house is located near a Paoli restaurant as both are hooked onto the same city sewer line
“That sewer line ends in his front yard. Last spring we dug all that up and put in a new pipe,” Adams said.
Problems still persisted leading to plans to move the line about 20 feet to the city easement and out of the local home’s front yard, while also hooking the restaurant’s sewer service to another line.
The problem has been building up enough money to do the job, which Adams said is not easy for a small town like Paoli.
That part of the equation appears to have been solved as the funds are not only available but a contractor already hired for the job, he said.
Another obstacle these days and one slowing the process even further has been a fairly regular series of rain systems.
“I do understand Gary’s frustration,” Adams said.
“We can only do what we can do. The only thing we’re waiting for is the weather.”
As for what the Eastwood’s think of the plan, Jamie is quick to cross her fingers hoping it will work.
“I think that would really help a lot,” Eastwood said.
“But it has been very costly, very smelly, tiresome, troublesome. It’s been very frustrating. I just hope it all works out.”
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