Lodi Racing Against Time To Fix Sewage Plant Roof Collapse
LODI (CBS13) — It's race against time in Lodi where a $2.3 million fix is underway to repair a sewage plant's roof collapse.
You'd never know what a problem it is by walking the streets in Lodi, but on the other end of the sewer lines is a mess.
"Oh my god it's, it's poop and pee," said Karen Honer.
There may be no greater spokeswoman for raw sewage than the superintendent of the massive sewage facility in Lodi.
"I don't love the smell, but it smells like money," she said.
She's now overseeing a $2 million plumbing problem.
"It's a big deal," she said. "It's a very big deal."
The roofs of two of Lodi's digesters—giant silos of waste—have disintegrated. The gases corroded the concrete and steel insides.
Lodi is only fixing one now, because it needs to use the other since it has more waste than space.
"It's a wing and a prayer that it's going to make it the next six months while that one off-line is being repaired," she said.
If both go down, Honer says they'd likely have to cut down waste processing time, that could be a state violation, and then pay a private firm that could cost ratepayers big.
"Public works is very expensive. just because we don't see it, we don't see the piping, it's very expensive what we do," she said.
The $2.3 million for the repair work is coming from wastewater utility fund reserves.