Late this past February, Allie Pfeiffer of University City had the jolting experience of finding her basement, along with those of seven of her neighbors, flooded with water and sewage.
On Trenton Street in University City, seven different households had their basements flooded due to a water main break which then flowed up through the sewer system. Pfeiffer, one Trenton Street resident, lost her hot water heater and her furnace, among other things.
“I don’t think anyone else lost that much, but they did lose stuff,” she said.
The company that owns the water main, American Water, originally sent the residents instructions to make a list of everything that was destroyed, Pfeiffer said. Later, however, American Water decided to reimburse each resident $1,500, regardless of the level of the damage.
Pfeiffer and her fellow Trenton Street residents believed that submitting the lists of damaged belongings meant that American Water would pay them for what they lost accordingly. However, in this case, American Water denied insurance liability, said Brian Russell, external affairs for manager American Water.
“We’re liable only really in two circumstances: if we caused the break itself or if we knew that a break was likely and we didn’t do anything to fix it,” Russell said. “And neither of those was the case, because on this particular main there was no history of prior breaks, so there was really no way to know that it was going to break, so Travelers [Insurance] denied liability.”
Representatives for Travelers Insurance, the company which insures American Water, would not comment on the situation, since the claim had not yet been settled.
“We sent a cleanup crew in to the affected houses, they dried it out, they treated so it doesn’t turn moldy, basically just getting it back in a livable condition,” Russell said. “And afterwards, sometime later, we offered $1500 to each of the homeowners to replace damaged belongings, just as kind of a goodwill gesture. We recognize that that area is just … some of those folks couldn’t afford to pay for all that stuff on their own, not all at once like that. We wanted to try to help them out as best we could, so we offered them the $1500.”
For Pfeiffer, that payment was not enough.
“It wasn’t enough for me – just for my essentials, not even for the keepsake things that I lost,” she said. “For just the hot water heater and the furnace, we’re talking about four or five thousand dollars.”
Some residents believed that Metropolitan Sewer District should have offered them some compensation along with what they received from American Water, because MSD was doing construction down the street at the time, which could have destabilized the water main. When asked if the construction had anything to do with the water main break, Russell replied, “There’s no way to tell if they were doing work and maybe it disturbed something but … there’d be no way to ever prove anything like that. So essentially, it’s just an unknown cause.”
Pfeiffer, however, said, “They did a lot of jackhammer, and there were times that the house shook. The things on the walls shook. So it’s very easy to figure out that this is probably what happened.”
Because she believes the construction might have caused the water main to break, Pfeiffer said that “Metropolitan Sewer could’ve taken care very easily of the money, but they won’t. They’re very hard-nosed.”
MSD, however, does not believe they are legally required to compensate anyone, since the construction work they were doing was already down the street from the affected homes by the time the water main broke.
“We had a project that was going on, but it was way down the street already. The work we were doing in the area was complete already,” said Lance LeComb, of MSD.
The construction project in question was a “sewer separation,” in which an older sewer line that contains both storm water and wastewater from homes is replaced with two different lines to minimize the chance of overflow.
As for the residents, most accepted the “goodwill gesture” of $1,500. In fact, a representative from Travelers’ Insurance, the company that provided insurance for American Water, was unaware that there was someone who had refused to accept that token payment.
Pfeiffer, however, was adamant that she would not accept the money, because it simply did not cover her needs. She is still without a water heater or furnace, despite her best efforts to contact the sewer district and American Water.
It appears there is little for affected residents to do other than to accept the $1500 or pursue legal action.
“If they have homeowners’ or renters’ insurance, maybe talk to them, and see if that group would represent them as they talk to Travelers,” suggested Russell. “Unfortunately, St. Louis County has some very old water mains, and sometimes they just break. There’s really no rhyme or reason to it.”
Pfeiffer remains frustrated.
“I know it’s hard dealing with these utility companies,” she said. “It used to be where the customer was right, and that’s no longer in the equation… It’s the company that’s right now, and they’re not treating their customers very fair. I guess that’s all I had to say. Like I said, I like to warn other people of what’s to come.”
Sophie Hurwitz is a St. Louis American editorial intern from John Burroughs School.
