City Councilman Introduces Bill To Reimburse South Phila. Residents For 2012 Water Main Break
By Mike Dunn
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) --- A massive water main break in South Philadelphia more than two years damaged more than 100 homes and businesses. Now a city councilman wants the city to do more to reimburse residents for damages.
It took more than two years and the intervention of a judge for residents affected by the 2012 water main break to receive damages from the city. But because the city's liability is capped at $500,000 under state law, the homeowners ended up being compensated for only about two thirds of their damages.
Councilman Kenyatta Johnson, who represents that neighborhood, is not satisfied:
"At the end of the day we don't want our constituents to receive 60%, which we're grateful for. We want them to be made whole," he said.
So Johnson has now introduced a bill that would allocate another $400,000 of city money to cover the remainder. It is likely that the Nutter Administration would balk at this; at a hearing on the matter last spring, an Administration official said without the cap on city liability, they would likely need to raise taxes to cover the cost of claims for such incidents.
Johnson is pushing ahead nonetheless. "Their homes were damaged through no fault of their own," he said. "So we'll introduce the ordinance and we'll go from there."
City officials say that 97 claims, totaling $1.7 million, had been filed over the incident. Homeowners' insurance in most cases would not cover the damage, according to the city, because of the exclusion in most policies for flood damage.
PECO, which suffered damage to underground facilities, originally filed a claim for $870,000. After a judge appointed a so-called 'special master' to settle the claims, PECO agreed to accept only about one-quarter of that, so that residents could receive 60% of their claims.
Johnson praised PECO for settling for the lower amount. In his report, the special master, David Fineman, also chided the Nutter Administration for failing to resolve the matter itself, thereby forcing the matter into court.
He wrote that in most cases of this type, "it would be the function of the executive branch of government to evaluate claims and extend equitable distribution offers." But Fineman wrote that in this case the Nutter Administration, "thrust its function upon the judicial branch of government, which resulted in the necessity of this report."