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A,nna Kron ca I 1221 County Road B W *Roseville, MN 55113 (651)492-0479 9104M Dear Roseville City Council, I am writing to tell you about a frustrating and financially burdensome situation that my husband and I have found ourselves in regarding our connection to the city sewer. I would appreciate your time reviewing this matter and hope you can help. In the first 4 1/2 years of living in our home, we had problems with our sewage mainline getting clogged, resulting in it backing up into our basement laundry room. This would happen every nine months or so without warning. According to the Roto rooter technician's the clog was always at the same spot -- At approximately 110 feet out. The problem got progressively worse with the final incident happening on Wednesday, February 14th, 2007, only three months after the previous one. After Roto Rooter cleared the line that evening, the technician decided it would be prudent to have the line surveyed with a camera to figure out the source of the problem. The following morning, they returned with their equipment and surveyed the line. The plumber determined that it is in generally very good shape, but there appeared to be a serious problem with the last section before it meets up with the city sewer. (This section happens to be under County Road B, a concrete road.) He was unable to determine exactly what was causing the line to back up because it was again full of water and debris already in spite of the fact it was cleaned out just since the night before. Unfortunately, he would not be able to identify the cause until they dug up the road. It was clear to all of us that this problem needed to be addressed immediately or else we would have the line backed up into our basement again after a load of laundry or running the dishwasher. Due to President's Day weekend, the soonest Roto Rooter was going to be able to start work was the following Tuesday, February 20th. I was at the site when the crew from Roto Rooter dug down toward the pipe. The soil was very wet, indicating that the pipe had been leaking for quite a while. When they got down to the pipe, there were a lot of tree roots around it. Upon closer look, they found that the pipes going from the house are steel and they connect to the stub which is made of clay tile. The pipes are not the same size, so the contractor the City hired in the 60s to connect our home with the city sewer used concrete (which was very common, apparently) to make the steel to clay connection. It is now known that concrete is not a great connector and it only lasts for a few years. Over time, the concrete disintegrates and tree roots searching for water are able to get inside the pipes. The plumber from Roto Rooter pulled out wads of tree roots so large that they almost completely blocked the pipe. The plumber said their equipment never would have been able to cut through this type of blockage and that it, in fact, would have taken a chainsaw to do so. He said he wouldn't be surprised if this started decades ago and the problem just now erupted. The line cleaning that we periodically had done when we would find sewage