Elizabeth Patton calls her back yard “the war zone.”

What once was a landscape of gardens and prairie grasses now is dominated by a trench flanked by piles of rocks.

The yard is full of holes because the city is requiring houses in her west Lawrence neighborhood to connect to the city’s sewer system, a project that has proven more costly and difficult than Patton or her neighbors had anticipated or the city predicted.

When the company Patton hired to do the work began digging in her back yard July 7, workers hit layers of limestone and shale. Now, Patton has discovered the cost of connecting to the sewer system will be nearly $30,000.

“I’m stunned, and this little voice in me keeps saying ‘this isn’t fair,'” she said. “But I don’t know if anybody cares that it isn’t fair.”

For Patton and dozens of her neighbors, the story is the same: After years of paying special assessments to install a sewer main, they’re now running into unexpected and expensive trouble connecting to the line by a December deadline.

And the neighbors are not sure where to turn for help in a battle that has been waged since the 1980s.

First sign of trouble

The Western Hills subdivision where Patton lives was not a part of Lawrence when the first houses were built there in the 1950s. The original 80 homes were built with septic systems common to rural or suburban fringe housing. But the neighborhood has long since been engulfed by Lawrence’s growth.

In 1985, after years of resistance by residents, the subdivision was annexed by the city, said Carmela Sibley, president of the Western Hills Neighborhood Assn.

Dustin Stoneking, who works for Brien Plumbing Co., digs out an old sewer line in the Western Hills subdivision. The city is requiring residents in this subdivision to hook on to the city sewer line, but costs originally estimated to be about ,600 have risen to nearly 0,000.

Then, in the early 1990s, some homeowners had septic tank failures and the city would not allow them to be replaced. Instead, residents were told they had to accept a benefit district to install a sewer main, then pay to connect their homes to it.

Terese Gorman, city engineer, said that happened because the city was told by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment that septic tanks were not allowed in the neighborhood.

“What drove (the benefit district) was that there was one system in the middle of the neighborhood that had failed, and the nearest sewer main was a good distance away,” Gorman said.

In an early meeting with residents, she said the city predicted the homeowners would pay $15,000 per home to put in the new sewer main.

In October 1998, spokesmen for the neighborhood association went to a City Commission meeting to ask that the city not put the total cost on the homeowners’ shoulders.

Early estimates

The city agreed to pick up half of the nearly $1.1 million cost to install a main line. That meant each of the 66 houses still using septic systems in the neighborhood would pay $7,591 in special assessments for the installation. Residents were allowed to pay their part in annual installments with interest over 15 years.

They also were told they would have to pay a plumbing company to connect their houses to the system by December 2003. Patton said she remembered the city estimating the cost at $3,500 per house.

In an October 1998 letter, residents were told, “Properly operating septic tanks and drain fields are not an acceptable reason for exclusion from the benefit district.”

Patton said that while she and her neighbors knew some of the septic systems might fail soon, they didn’t understand why they couldn’t keep the systems until that happened.

“Everybody wanted to be left alone, or at least, when your own (septic tank) fails, be required to hook up from the street to the back of your house,” she said.

It isn’t clear how many houses in the subdivision still aren’t connected to the city’s sewer system. Gorman said that at the beginning of the summer, 40 houses had yet to be connected. Sibley estimated only 12 homes were still using septic tanks.

Running into trouble

The problem for homeowners is the unexpected cost of connecting to the sewer system, which increases significantly when contractors hit patches of rock. Compounding the problem is the length of the trench that has to be dug to accomplish the connections. The houses sit on one-acre plots, often more than 100 feet from the city’s main sewer pipe.

Another problem arose when plumbers told homeowners the city had not put the main line deep enough in some places. On many of the properties, it is actually uphill from the house to the main, making connections impossible to accomplish.

Connections from a house to a main line must have a downhill grade, or slope, of at least one-eighth of an inch per foot, according to national plumbing code, said Kurt Kastl, co-owner of Kastl Plumbing.

The problems have shocked new residents.

David and Camille Santee moved into the neighborhood in October knowing they would have to pay for a connection — but not expecting trouble with rock or the slope.

Then a plumber told them their house was so low it would not meet slope requirements to get to the main line and they would have to buy a sewage pump. Camille Santee said that meant if the power went out, their yard would fill with sewage.

“The plumber told us that they could dig, but it would end up being something like $30,000,” Santee said. “He said it looked like the city ran into rock, so it only dug the main line halfway (deep) and left it to us to pick up the rest.”

Uncomfortable results

Mary Getter’s plumber also hit rock and found there wasn’t enough slope for the line to meet code. Getter and her husband hired a lawyer.

Getter was then told in a letter from the city that a variance of the code on slope would be granted to make the connection. She said the variance was granted and the sewer line installed, but Getter is uneasy about the result.

“I still go down to the basement hoping I don’t find sewage, because I know they didn’t put it in right,” she said.

Floyd Bost, master plumber with Brien Plumbing Co., is working on Patton’s sewer connection. He said he made bids on connecting five of the houses in the neighborhood — and hit rock on each one.

In Patton’s case, plumbers dug a 300-foot trench 12 feet deep through 5 feet of limestone, 2 feet of shale and another layer of limestone.

“There is no way to anticipate what is below the surface,” Bost said. “The city should make provisions in case this situation comes up.”

Gorman said the city had helped anyone who had a slope problem by taking land elevations at the home and finding a way to make slope.

“We are not aware at this time of anybody having problems making it to the main,” she said.

Gorman said she knew some residents had been told by plumbers there was no way to make the connection to the main, but the city found plumbers hadn’t completely analyzed the elevations.

“Anytime anyone has contacted us, we have been happy to be involved,” Gorman said. “I will definitely agree that there are some that are close, but we have always found solutions that are doable.”

Paying the price

Patton, a reading teacher, is struggling to find a way to pay for the work. She has to pay Brien Plumbing more than $20,000 by Aug. 10.

Patton had applied for a $5,000 emergency loan through the city but said she made too much money to qualify.

“I call this my retirement,” Patton said. “It’s right down the hole.”

Velta Sitler estimated she spent $14,000 for her sewer connection — four times the city’s estimate — by the time the installation was completed. With rising taxes and utility bills, she said, she may be forced to move.

“I’m retired, and my husband has passed on, and it will be really hard,” Sitler said. “But I don’t think there is anything we can do about it.”

Tom and Kathy Waller had problems with both the slope and rock. The plumber’s original bid to dig 120 feet to the main line was $2,100, but after hitting rock the price rose to about $11,000.

“We felt it was probably time that it happened, we just didn’t expect it to cost this much,” Kathy Waller said.

Sibley, the neighborhood association president, said the city forced the sewer system on the neighborhood and should be responsible for paying for it.

“If they haven’t put (the main line) at the right depth, then they should be picking this up,” Sibley said.

If houses in the neighborhood are sold before they are connected to the sewer, Gorman said, the city would require the new owners to pick up their part of the tab for the system.

But Patton, who has lived in the neighborhood 23 years, said moving wasn’t an option for her.

“My financial adviser said, ‘You should’ve sold when you found out about this,'” she said. “But this is my home.”