Sewage floods houses, prompts suit against city.
The inside of Nina Hart's home looks like a hurricane swept through it.
The entire place is abandoned, void of any furniture or appliances, except two toilets and a sink that sit in the middle of one room. The walls are bare, ripped open in some places, revealing shrouds of insulation. The faint stench of must, mildew and worse hangs in the air.
Hart's home on Juan de
***image3***
Dios Road has indeed suffered a disaster-although this one not so natural.
Last February, a City of Santa Fe
sewer line clogged up, forcing a violent stream of sewage to spurt out of Hart's toilet and bathtub. So much sewage gurgled out of the bathroom, it created a four-inch coat around Hart's home, ruining virtually everything she owns.
"It was an incredible shock," she says. "Imagine your entire home, everything you have, all gone overnight."
Now, after months of wrangling with the city for just compensation, Hart is suing. The lawsuit claims the city neglected to properly maintain the sewage pipe in her neighborhood and should thus pay the cost of damages, the reconstruction of her home and other charges related to the sewage.
Conversely, City Attorney Frank Katz says the city is beholden to a state law that limits the amount of money a municipality can dole out in such cases.
Hart and her boyfriend Matt Deason, both musicians, were in Tucson on Feb. 2 when the flood occurred. After they got word of the sewage flood in their neighborhood, the two rushed back to Santa Fe, only to find their home in ruins. The sewage had effectively decimated the inside of their house, and destroyed some of their most prized possessions-amplifiers, guitars and computers-too.
Costy Kassisieh, director of the city's Wastewater Management Division, says the sewage block on Juan de Dios was likely caused by vandalism-someone, apparently, placed rocks in the sewer pipe, causing sewage to block.
Kassisieh says such blocks occur once or twice a year and can also occur from tree roots that protrude into sewer lines or grease from restaurants that clogs those lines. In an effort to maintain the city's 300 miles of sewers, crews conduct daily maintenance, Kassisieh says.
***image1***
The city's explanation doesn't change the scope of the tragedy for Hart, who has owned her home for eight years. Forced to move four times since the flood, Hart even
spent nights on a friend's floor. Further, the costs of renting a new apartment, coupled with her $800 monthly mortgage payment, has made life financially untenable.
The city, she says, has only paid $16,500 to decontaminate her home and an additional $1,000 for an environmental inspection. Hart estimates her rental costs, the personal property damages and the cost of reconstructing the house will run approximately $85,000.
According to Hart, city officials informed her that state law caps any potential payments at $100,000 per incident in the case of property damage. Because the home of her neighbor, Robert Wilson, suffered more damage than Hart's, he will likely receive $60,000
***image2***
from the city and Hart, $40,000.
After a series of meetings with city officials, Hart decided to sue.
"What I'm asking for will not nearly cover all that has happened to us," Hart says tearfully.
Paul Grand, the lawyer representing the city on Hart's claim, did not immediately return a phone call to his office. Katz says he is unfamiliar with all of the details of the case, but also cites the Tort Claims Act, passed in the late 1970s, which stipulates that the government's liability for property damage arising out of a single incident shall not exceed $100,000.
"Part of the problem is that this is your money and mine," Katz says. "Our insurers restrict us to the state law limit. How comfortable are you to have your taxes raised to cover this?"
Still, Katz concedes that the current cap probably "works an injustice" on some people and says the State Legislature should re-examine the law. Katz also says Hart's estimate of $85,000 worth of damages "doesn't sound outrageous to me."
Hart's tribulations also have garnered the support of an unlikely ally, Dennis Gee, former director of the city's Utilities Department.
Gee, whose own home was flooded with nearly a foot of sewage on Christmas Eve of 1998, says the city should distinguish property damage from other costs resulting from sewage floods.
"I'm surprised the people in charge wouldn't be more accommodating towards housing someone they just flooded out," Gee, who served as utilities director from 1999 until the middle of 2001, says.
The state law cited by Katz also allows for up to $750,000 in compensation to multiple victims, according to Ed Zendel, risk services director for the New Mexico Municipal League. That money would be limited to expenses other than property and medical costs. But Hart says the onus is on her to prove that the alternative housing expenses and the reconstruction of her home should not be categorized as property damage and subject to the $100,000 cap.
Neighbor Robert Wilson, who says he doesn't have the money to sue, sympathizes with Hart.
"I can understand the city has to act for all people, not just a few," Wilson, who claims he has been suffering from gastrointestinal problems from the sewage, says. "But I also believe that it is not moral or right to treat its citizens this way."
Meanwhile, Hart and Deason hope the city will, in the end, help them resurrect their lives. It's only fair, they say, considering it is the city that pumped their house full of sewage to begin with.
Says Deason: "I always would see people on television whose homes were destroyed by a hurricane. I would think 'Well, at least they're alive.' But now I get it. That night, it was like a piece of us died too."
