DE PERE, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — Some De Pere residents are raising questions, after learning they could be required to spend thousands of dollars to install sump pumps in their homes. The city informed residents earlier this month about the proposal, leaving those impacted wondering, ‘why now?’
The City of De Pere has a clear water problem. According to the city, each year, it’s sending an estimated 500-million gallons of clear water into the Green Bay Metropolitan Sewage District or NEW Water treatment facility — that doesn’t need to be treated.
The treatment of that water not only costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, that’s passed on to taxpayers, but it also overwhelms the system. “They’ve (NEW Water) had some issues, 2018, 2019 with a high amount of rain where their treatment plant was at capacity and it happens during rain events which is related to the amount of water coming into our system, clear water,” says De Pere City engineer, Eric Rakers.
De Pere officials say the excess of clear water in the city is coming from the close to 2,000 homes it believes don’t have sump pumps; structures built before 1973 when sump pumps weren’t required.
Rakers says, “A lot of the older houses do not have sump pumps. When the houses were built, they put in what we call a foundation drain around the foundation and they would just connect it to the sewer because at those years they weren’t concerned about clear water because we had combined sewers back then, but now they’re separated so it is a big problem.”
The city recently kicked off the first phase of its “Foundation Drain Disconnection Program” reaching out to residents it believes don’t have sump pumps, telling them eventually they’ll need to have one installed.
Of the more than 2,400 letters sent, more than 400 property owners informed the city they do in fact have a sump pump.
Homeowners like Mike Walsh, whose wife received the letter, however don’t. While Walsh understands the idea of the sump pump requirement, he’s wondering about the effects of installing one. He says, “A lot of us have concerns that we have 122-year old foundation and what happens when you start jackhammering, what then happens to your foundation, to your basement.”
Walsh isn’t the only one concerned about the impact. The city says it’s heard from plenty of people with the same questions and those who wonder how much something like this will cost.
City officials are sympathetic to those concerns and they don’t have all the answers. They simply want to get the conversation started and know there are many more discussions to be had before a resolution is reached.
