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DAVID KARPIn one South Tampa neighborhood, heavy rains send a smelly mess into the streets, the result of an inadequate sewer system.
TAMPA - When the rain came Monday morning, the people who live on Coachman Avenue knew what would come next.
In the middle of the street, the manhole began to spit up brown water. Soon, it gushed.
As wastewater rushed through the cracks of manhole covers, residents could hear a ringing sound. It was the singing of sewage pouring into their street.
Dozens of residents elsewhere in the Tampa area found out after Frances what raw sewage smells like. But residents on Coachman Avenue and Alline Street in South Tampa know the odor well.
After a heavy rain, it wafts though the streets in this neighborhood called Bayshore Beautiful.
Frances' heavy rain and the loss of electricity did not cause the sewage spill. Instead, city officials say development in South Tampa has increased so much that it has forced too much sewage down a single pipe on Coachman Avenue.
Right now, that pipe - just a foot and half wide - handles wastewater for more than 2,000 homes and businesses in an area that stretches past Dale Mabry Highway.
Every time one of these residents flushes a toilet or runs a dishwater, the waste flows under Coachman Avenue next to $300,000 homes with St. Augustine grass.
Rain adds an extra load to the sewage system. Rainwater seeps into cracks in the old pipes, overwhelming the lines. With one storm last month, the sewage treatment plant, which ordinarily handles about 65-million gallons per day, processed 190-million gallons per day.
"I know I am 40 or 50 years too late," said public works administrator Steve Daignault. "But this is not a part of the city we should have built in."
But the city did allow development, and as homes were approved, more builders tapped into the old sewer line.
The system grew and grew, until it could not handle the load anymore, Daignault said.
He estimated solving the problem would cost at least $2-million, plus another $2- or $3-million to buy homes so the city can build a retention pond to store wastewater.
And that will only keep sewage off two South Tampa streets - it won't fix the flooding problem completely.
The city needs to install new, larger pipes and divert some of the wastewater into different systems, Daignault said. It also needs holding ponds to keep homes from flooding.
Mayor Pam Iorio would not commit Wednesday to spend that kind of money from city coffers. The cost would eat up a huge piece of the city's enterprise funds, which pay for sewers and other utilities, she said.
"I think we have to evaluate it," Iorio said.
She said she wants to look for funds from the federal government or state agencies to correct what she calls an environmental problem. The city hasn't been aggressive enough finding federal funds, she said.
She'll have to begin the search without a stormwater director. Mike Salmon, a City Hall veteran who ran the department, resigned recently. "It's not something that has any simple fix to it," Iorio said of the city's stormwater problems.
That's not what residents in Bayshore Beautiful want to hear. About 50 residents met Tuesday night to discuss the problem, which they call a public health threat.
Many residents received a letter two weeks ago - after the last sewage spill - suggesting they contact a doctor if they touched raw sewage water.
"We apologize for any problems this may cause," the letter, signed by wastewater director Ralph Metcalf, said.
Tuesday afternoon, brown water was still bubbling out of the manhole cover on Coachman Avenue, long after the floods receded.
Ramji Shah said he spent three hours Monday picking up toilet paper that floated into his friend's back yard.
"It was gross," he said.
Told her taxes might increase to repair the sewer mess, Jana Goodman scoffed.
"We don't pay enough taxes?" she said.
This year, according to records, the property taxes in her neighborhood typically run $3,000 or more.
Mark Zewalk, a photojournalist at WTVT-FOX 13 who lives near the manhole cover on Coachman Avenue, said the city should be responsible for providing basic services for all its citizens.
"We live collectively," Zewalk said. "We pay for each other street's and sewer and infrastructure. I help pay for a road I may drive on twice in my life. I pay for the rebuilding of a city park in a part of town I will never go to."
This chronic problem needs to be resolved, he said.
"At some point," he said, "we have to get the poop out of these people's houses."