Opinion ID: 1610303
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Dixon's Version

Text: According to Dixon's affidavit, filed in opposition to the Board's motion for a summary judgment, she awoke at approximately 6:00 a.m. to a gurgling sound and found [that] sewage had begun to enter [her] home as it was pumping out of the toilets and the tub. Her affidavit further states: At around 6:00 a.m., I called ... a plumber and began to call friends for help. They referred me to the Board of Water & Sewer. I called the Mobile Board of Water & Sewer number on the morning of November 21, 2000, around 7:00.... As sewage was entering the entirety of my home some two to three inches deep, I began to carry my pets and belongings outside of my home to my vehicles. My vehicles were parked adjacent to the lift station and in the course of carrying out my pets and belongings, I noticed that the red light was on at the lift station. The red light at the lift station was on during the time the sewage was pumping into my home as the red light was blinking. 2. The Board of Water & Sewer representatives arrived around 8:00 ... in the morning. By the time they arrived and did work inside the lift station, sewage had pumped into my home and through my home for one hour and everything that I had was covered with raw sewage. After they appeared around 8:00 a.m..... and worked at the lift station, the sewage stopped pumping into my home. 3. During the entire time that sewage was pumping into my home on the morning of November 21, 2000, and prior to the Board of Water & Sewer arriving around 8:00 a.m., roughly an hour after I called them, the red light was on at the lift station.... 4. The red light at the lift station had been on before and was on this particular morning. The red light at the lift station has been on a number of occasions after I moved into the home three months after November 21, 2000, particularly, October 13, 2001, at which time the red light was on; however, the Board of Water & Sewer was out within a few minutes to make repairs and I suffered no surcharging into my home. There have been other occasions after I moved back into my home after the November 21, 2000, event at which the red light would come on and the lift station would shut down; however, the Board of Water & Sewer has been responsive to those situations and has made repairs within a matter of a few minutes and I have had no further surcharge of raw sewage into my home after November 21, 2000. Dixon argues, among other things, that a system malfunction occurred at the lift station, which is located on property adjacent to, and below, her house, causing the sewage to back up into her home. She contends that the malfunction was electronically communicated to the Board's personnel through an alarm system, but that they failed to respond to the alarm in a timely manner. In support of this theory, she presented by affidavit the expert testimony of Charles Peterson, Jr., an engineer with experience in design, supervising and/or consulting with municipal and private sewage collection, treatment and operations facilities. His testimony was based on his review of Dixon's home, the adjacent Water-Board lift station, the Rester & Coleman Construction plans for the subject lift station, and the Mobile Board of Water & Sewer work orders relative to the surcharging of sewage into Ms. Dixon's home. Peterson testified, in pertinent part: 3. Based on the Rester & Coleman construction plans for the subject lift station and the sanitary sewer system, the collection area is such that if the lift station adjacent to Ms. Dixon's home is down and not running, the red light is on, which signals that the lift station is not functioning. If the red light is on signifying that the lift station is down, then based on the location of Ms. Dixon's home, sewage will be pushed into her home as sewage from the adjacent homes cannot be processed at the lift station. As the red light was on during the time of Ms. Dixon's surcharging, I am of the opinion that the malfunctioning of the lift station caused the sewage to surcharge into Ms. Dixon's home. 4. As the Board of Water & Sewer is charged with the responsibility of operating and maintaining the sewage collection system, to include the lift stations, it is imperative that a prompt response be made if, in fact, the red light is on at the lift station, as, failing a prompt response, within a few minutes, sewage will overflow carrying infectious bacteria into the home of Ms. Dixon, as occurred in this case. 5. Further, it is my understanding that the lift station adjacent to Ms. Dixon's home is tied into the Board of Water & Sewer system through a computer system which carries an instant signal to the Board of Water & Sewer for a response should the lift station be down, and, in this case, the response did not occur for approximately one hour, which, based on the crucial nature of the lift station, is not an adequate or timely response to preclude the surcharging into Ms. Dixon's home as occurred. Peterson's opinions regarding the operation of the lift station are consistent with testimony presented by the Board's employees, in particular, James Sneed, its collections systems engineer. Sneed testified regarding, among other things, the function of the lift station: Basically, [sewage] flows downhill in a gravity system. The reason that we have lift stations in Mobile is that we don't have enough change in terrain to have all the [sewage] flowing downhill all the way to the plant. So what you'll have are gravity systems set up in neighborhoods, and they flow to a lift station, and then a lift station will pump that into another system, and it will gravity flow into the next lift station and be pumped on.... Testimony from Sneed, in conjunction with testimony from other Board employees, including Malcolm Steeves, the director of the Board, indicated that each lift station is designed to receive sewage from one or more in-flowing sewer lines; the sewage flows into a reservoir, or wet well, in which one or more pumps are located. The pumps are preset to activate automatically when the wastewater in the wet well rises to a predetermined level. Similarly, they deactivate when the wastewater falls below a preset level. The functions of the red light Dixon allegedly observed on the morning of November 21, 2000, in relation to the alarm system discussed in Peterson's affidavit, are illuminated through Steeves's testimony. The red light indicates a problem with the lift station. Steeves testified that [t]ypically, the red light would indicate that the sewage level in the wet well has exceeded the normal operating levels. This condition could result from various causes, including the malfunction of one or more of the pumps in the lift station. Steeves said that the red light indicates that the lift station needs attention. If the pumps in the lift station are not functioning properly, he testified, it was possible that sewage could back up into Dixon's house. Significantly, Steeves testified, a condition activating the red light would not result from a grease blockage between the lift station and Dixon's house. In other words, a grease blockage above the lift station, but below Dixon's house, would not trigger the red light at the lift station. The same conditions that trigger the red light also automatically trigger a visual and audible alarm at the Williams Wastewater Facility (the Williams plant). Indeed, the Board has in place an electronic monitoring capability, which it refers to as SCADA, [1] that according to Steeves picks up certain information from the [lift] station and through radio transmission[s], sends a signal back to the Williams plant, approximately every eight minutes. Thus, the alarm should have sounded if the pumps in the lift station were not working properly. The alarm, like the red light at the lift station, would not be activated by a grease blockage in the sewer lines between the lift station and Dixon's house.