JANESVILLE, Wis. â Thereâs few headaches for homeowners that can match the stress of a sewage backup. For Maggie Haffrey in Janesville, however, the headache has dragged on now for nearly four months and now threatens her ability to ever live in her home again.
Thereâs nothing she could have done on her own property to prevent a sewage backup that destroyed her basement in September. Roots caused a blockage in the cityâs sewer main line on Frederick Street, causing water and sewage to back into her home, according to city documents.
But itâs Maggie that has to foot the $15,000 bill.
Maggie Haffrey
A disabled Army veteran who also worked for 25 years as a unit clerk at Mercy Hospital before health issues forced a retirement in her late 40s, at 67 she has spent much of the last two and a half decades raising her children, helping with grandchildren, and making jewelry.
Maggie lives on social security. She lost her husband years earlier; her daughter died of cancer earlier in 2020, and lived in Maggieâs care for the past six years. Still grieving and now alone at the home with her dog, she rarely made the trip downstairs if she could help it because of her disability.
It was a caretaker who found sewage floating in roughly two feet of basement water sometime shortly before September 16âthough Maggie canât recall the exact day. She called her insurance company, assuming help and repair estimates would begin there. On September 16 when she saw utility trucks on her street, she called the city. That day, they cleaned the blockageâand the water retreated from the basement, leaving an impossible task to Maggie.
Experts would later tell her it wasnât even safe to be in the basement, she said. The smell was still pungent when News 3 Investigates visited in late December. Dried sewage was still caked on parts of the floor; boxes, supplies, and storage items caught in the water when it first flooded sat spoiled. Itâs physically painful for Maggie to guide the cameras down the stairs to show the place. Cleanup is beyond her; unfortunately, so are the costs of the repair.
Estimates for just the repair portion of the basementânot including some of the cleanup, or the pieces of equipment to replace like the furnace, washer & dryer, or sump pumpâwas estimated in October at $15,000.
âI just donât have it. Thereâs no way of getting it,â Maggie explained. âNobody wants to take responsibility or help. I donât know if thereâs anybody out there who can help or not. I donât know who else to talk to.â
Fiercely independent, she kept living in the home for two months after the initial flooding until the November cold forced her out. She bought a small space heater to get by, washed her dishes in cold water, and tried to figure out the mess.
Showers were some of the most difficult, she recalled, particularly because of her disability that makes standing in the shower so hard. The water was cold; the sponge baths made it even worse.
The City
When the Janesville Water Utility Department got the call on September 16, a worker got photos of the basement and told Haffrey to âsend her bills to the city,â she told News 3 Investigates. When the city responded to her claim by telling her they would reject it because the roots originated on a neighborâs property and they didnât have prior knowledge of the incident, she was confused.
âThis isnât my fault. I didnât cause the damage,â she said.
The cityâs main line on that street was last cleaned in February, 2019 according to Janesville utilities director Dave Botts. DNR records indicate the city has received an âAâ grade for their wastewater utility management in both 2018 and 2019, with an expert ranking them among the top systems in the state.
Roots growing into sewer lines are a common reason for blockages that go on to cause sewage backups, both in Janesville and elsewhere. Janesville documentation notes that itâs the responsibility of the Water Utility Department to keep sewer main pipes âclean and flowing freely.â But that responsibility doesnât become legal liability if the city doesnât have knowledge of the blockage before itâs reported, Janesville assistant city attorney Tim Hellnitz said.
âItâs not at fault for that,â Hellnitz said of the cityâs responsibility for the blockage in their main line that caused the damage in Haffreyâs basement. âThe city did not do anything incorrectly. There is a main; thereâs going to be obstructions sometimes. And the city canât prevent any and every obstruction that can come up in a main.â
Municipalities are generally not held liable in Wisconsin for sewer blockages unless they caused the backup or have knowledge of a problem on the line and fail to fix it, legal counsel Claire Silverman for the Wisconsin League of Municipalities said. But the most recent summary of applicable law acknowledges that at least one court decision (Janzake v. City of Brookfield) has left a window open for municipalities to be found liable in scenarios where trees have created a blockage in a government-owned line. In that case, the plaintiffâs expert argued that cleaning of problem areas with a sewer rooter should be done bi-monthly, according to that legal summary from the Wisconsin League of Municipalities.
Another home had backed up at the same time from that root blockage, Botts said; otherwise, he âdidnât thinkâ that place on the line was a trouble spot for tree roots.
A cityâs liability in these types of cases hinges on whether they âoughtâ to have known but didnât because they failed to do regular inspections or had some other indication a blockage was or might develop and didnât take precautions, retired law professor Peter Carstensen said.
âIt is not sufficient to say that [a city] did not know of a specific blockage,â he noted. In reviewing the legal summary of Wisconsin liability law in relation to these types of issues, he added that the tree roots issue was an example of a complex boundary problem between exempt âdiscretionaryâ decisions and nonexempt âmandatoryâ decisions.
âIn an world of insurance, this has always seemed to me to be very questionable especially when the harms are often excluded from homeownerâs insurance coverage.â
The Insurance
An old insurance policy that changed hands in 2015 from Newark Mutual to All-Star had $1,000 in water backup coverage added at the time of the transition, insurance documents show. Previously unaware of the absence in her policy for substantial coverage for this scenario, Haffrey appealed to the Wisconsin Commissioner of Insurance, which proved futile because the claim had been handled correctly, they told her.
Water or sewage backup options hadnât been discussed when she first set the insurance up, Maggie said, leaving her unaware of her coverage needs.
âThey justâŠlaid me out a plan, you know,â she explained. âI tried to get something without a real high deductible because Iâm on a limited incomeâsocial security, you know.â
The standard home insurance policy doesnât actually include coverage for sewage backups, University of Wisconsin-Madison Prof. Tyler Leverty of risk and insurance said. Instead, that type of coverage has to be purchased through a separate endorsement that typically ranges from $5,000 to $25,000 in allowed coverage.
âInsuranceâthatâs its whole role is to cover unforeseen, unknown things that are not the responsibility of a homeowner,â Leverty noted, emphasizing why this was an example of why using an agent or broker is beneficial when making coverage decisions.
âEither go through an expert, an insurance agent, or insurance broker to find proper coverage for yourself to make sure that youâre covered for these types of events,â he explained, âOr to become really well informed about what home insurance policies cover and do not cover.â
Maggie, meanwhile, says sheâs exhausted her options. The backup wasnât her fault. No one else will take responsibility. But on a fixed income, family equally unable to chip in, and few resources from the community groups, officials, and systems sheâs reached out toâher home of almost 40 years feels like itâs slipping out of her grasp.
Sheâs living temporarily with her daughter. For the first two months after the backup, she stayed putâtrying to solve the problem on her own with her limited resources.
âI was trying to get something done and not just abandon the house. I love my house,â she said. âIâve had it for years, and raised my kids here. I donât want to lose it. But Iâm at the point I donât know what Iâm gonna do.â
Maggieâs daughter has started a GoFundMe for the basement repair and furnace, washer, dryer and sump pump repair costs.
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