There’s a lingering odour of cleaning chemicals in the small unfinished basement of Erica Maxwell’s home in Halifax.
It’s a stark contrast to the smell and the mess she dealt with last week when sewage started spewing out of a drain in a basement corner.
The 46-year-old web developer, who lives on Mic Mac Street in the west end, said Halifax Water was doing work on the sewage lines on Sept. 30 and accidentally blocked off the sewage line to 24 houses, including the one she rents.
As a result, she said, sewage backed up into the properties.
She was doing laundry at about 1 p.m. when she noticed the problem.
“The first part of the water didn’t smell bad, it was mostly the water from the laundry,” she recounted in an interview at her home Tuesday.
Then it started smelling bad.
“The first smell was like your basic sewage smell, a strong chemical smell,” Maxwell said. “I had all the windows open, it was quite cold last week. . . . There was solid toilet paper in the drain in the backup. … Gross crud.”
At first she and her landlord thought it was an internal household problem so they called a plumber. He arrived at about 4 p.m. but said he couldn’t do much about it.
After consulting with neighbours who also were experiencing backups, they decided it was likely related to work Halifax Water was doing in the neighbourhood.
A utility crew member quickly responded to their call equipped with a deodorizing agent that he poured on the overflowing drain. The blockage eventually was cleared but Maxwell said the worker told her she would have to clean up the mess regardless of the cause.
“They should have apologized and said we’ll send a crew immediately to clean up,” Maxwell said.
For its part, Halifax Water says it didn't cause the backup, but responded after a pair of complaints.
Spokesman James Campbell said the utility hadn't been doing work in the neighbourhood at that time and he questioned whether dozens of other houses had been affected by the backup.
"We responded to the 2 calls from 2 properties on Mic Mac Street, found the sewer line to be blocked by debris and cleared the sewer line," Campbell said in email.
"We have no record of 24 homes having a sewer backup. It seems unlikely in the extreme that our Customer Care Centre or Operations Staff would not be aware of 24 properties being impacted by a sewer backup on September 30th, on any street."
Maxwell's landlord bought her a dehumidifier for the basement and hired a cleaning company that was working at other local properties affected by the backup.
But Maxwell said the cleaners, who didn't arrive until the next day, weren’t equipped or trained to properly deal with a sewage cleanup.
She ended up staying late into the evening with the cleanup team and spent the rest of a "stressful" week working on the affected areas of the basement with Javex, hot water and a brush.
Maxwell did have items stored in the basement but they were wrapped in heavy plastic and weren’t damaged (even though she had to disinfect the plastic and move her items to another area.)
She also worries about the health effects of breathing in chemicals and sewage reek for a week on her and her six-year-old papihuahua Meg.
