CHESTERVILLE – “I feel like it got worse,” Susan Moody said dejectedly Thursday of her clogged septic system.
Moody, a woman who struggles with mental illness and other disabilities, was recently featured in a Sun Journal story highlighting the inability of poor homeowners in the state to repair malfunctioning home septic systems.
Moody’s case is extreme.
On Thursday a plumber, paid by Tri-County Mental Health Services, visited Moody’s home and told her the pipes leading out of her home to the septic tank are blocked so badly that he couldn’t get a snake beyond 50 feet.
He also thinks her tank needs replacing.
“He hit something solid,” Moody said he told her.
Moody’s kitchen and bathroom sinks and her bathtub are completely blocked, with sewage backing up into them.
She said the bathroom was a mess after the plumber left and she had to wash everything, including the walls.
The plumber told her not to use her drains or her toilet, suggesting she use a bucket instead of flushing, and to dump it in the woods, she said.
She said she doesn’t know what she will do.
She will continue to do a few dishes in a basin in her sink and dump the water outside, as she has been doing for several months.
She hasn’t yet spoken with Tom Mitchell, the town’s plumbing inspector, but she thinks the town will require her to get a portable toilet until the system is fixed.
At $80 a month, she doesn’t know how she will be able to afford it, but fixing her system may cost up to $10,000.
Moody, 53, lives alone on a fixed income of $589 monthly.
The only help she can hope for may come from a state program that provides grant money for needy families to fix septic systems.
The small community grant program, administered through the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, has not been funded for two years, though the agency has received more than $2.4 million in requests for aid this year, according to Stephen McLaughlin, an engineer with the DEP.
Gov. John Baldacci recently signed a bond package that includes $1 million for the program.
But that money will become available only if voters approve the package in November.
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