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From sewage to snowmelt, Weber County residents face flooding issues

Posted at 9:49 PM, Feb 09, 2017
and last updated 2017-02-10 10:36:31-05

WEBER COUNTY, Utah -- It was a nightmare for dozens of homeowners in Farr West Thursday night as raw sewage seeped into their homes.

It has been going on for days, costing homeowners tens of thousands of dollars, and they say they still don't have answers as to why it's happening.

“It just started bubbling, the toilet did, then within five, ten minutes the whole basement was covered,” said Justin Caldwell, a homeowner in Farr West impacted by the flooding.

Caldwell says sewage has been seeping out of the pipes for days.

“I got human feces coming out; there's human feces over my whole floor,” Caldwell said.

They’ve been working around the clock, trying to keep their heads above water.

“We've been doing this for three days,” Caldwell said. “Very aggravating.”

Now Caldwell’s house is so hazardous he can't live in it. His is one of nearly 30 houses on this road experiencing flooding.

The city is now investigating why this is happening. Even for homeowners that don't have water filling their house, the stench is getting in.

“Now my house is full of sewer gases, my whole house smells like sewage,” said Craig Mumford, one of Caldwell’s neighbors.

While they fight the flood of sewage water, other neighborhoods in Weber County have swimming pools forming in their back yards from the extreme snowmelt. And in some cases it's pouring into homes.

“In the 21 years we've lived here, we've never seen water this bad,” said Bret Liechty of Pleasant View.

But Wednesday night, snowmelt flooded his yard and basement.

“Last night at 10 o'clock me and my son were down there in six inches of mud just digging away trying to get the water, cause it was coming in so fast it was literally flowing in,” Liechty said.

The snowmelt is likely to only get more intense with this weekend's forecast.

“With rain on top of snow on top of frozen ground, you're going to see a lot of that water coming off quicker than you normally would,” said Scott Paxman, Assistant GM for the Weber Basin Water Conservancy District.