City utility workers were smoking the sewer systems in the Sudbury neighborhood Sept. 21 in an effort to locate any leaks in the system. The City is working to solve a problem created when water infiltrates and overwhelms the sewers, which overloads the lift station. Looking at the run time of the pumps at the station, they can tell which area the infiltration is coming from when the pump station gets overwhelmed.

Workers then go and blow smoke into the sewers and examine the area to see if it comes out in areas where it shouldn’t appear, such as:

– the middle of a ditch where the grass is hiding a hole
– leaking from a broken clean out
– empty lots where houses have been torn down but no one ever closed the open sewer pipe.

As they find leaks they repair them to protect the integrity of the system.