“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” is fortunately proving not to be the case throughout Indianola.
Numerous 911 calls have come in for the Indianola Fire Department over the past two weeks from concerned citizens reporting smoke coming out of everything from bathrooms to literally the kitchen sink.
City officials want people to know that the smoke is all a part of their effort to detect and locate leaks in the city’s sewage system.
Crews from Gardner Engineering have been smoke testing the underground pipes throughout the city looking for cracks or breaks in the lines.
City Engineer Ron Cassada explained that rainwater penetration can overload the pumping system and cause complications with the pumps by forcing them to run longer.
By pumping smoke into the sewers, they can identify problem areas. If smoke is coming out, then rain water is getting into the system.
“Our goal is to get rainwater out of the sewer,” Cassada said because the Environmental Protection Agency only wants the systems to treat wastewater.
Once the teams spot the smoke, they mark the area and log the address or location and nature of the leak.
“Then we’re going to take all of this information, fill out a report and give it to the city to figure out where we’re taking on the most infiltration on our lines,” said Blake Gibson with Gardner.
Cassada said they hope to have all the testing done by the first week in August. Their crews will be working in the area east of B.B. King Road this week, then the area east of Garrard from Oak Street to Second Street before heading to the areas north of Second Street.
