Tuscaloosa County resident: Neighbors’ sewage causing stinky situation
By WVUA 23 News Reporter Aajene Robinson
A Tuscaloosa County family says they’re tired of their yard getting covered in overflow sewage water coming from their neighbor’s property.
Brandi Carr and her son, Dustin McAdams, said there’s not much they can do to battle the stinky smell and squishy soil, and the issue is coming from an abandoned trailer next to theirs.
“I am sick of it,” McAdams said. “Me, my mom, and my sister have to live in this trailer.”
Despite the trailer being abandoned, the water from its septic system is overflowing onto Carr’s property, sometimes getting as far as under her own home.
McAdams said the Tuscaloosa County Health Department sent an environmental services employee out to see the issue, and that the employee said if the drain fields of a septic tank aren’t functioning properly, the sewage water coming from the septic tanks can overflow.
“The sewage just runs down and it drains under our house,” McAdams said. “We smell it every day. This has been happening for at least three years almost, and they don’t repair it. They just come out here and rig it, and then when some type of storm comes by it bursts open and floods the whole property.”
Carr said she contacted the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff’s Office about the issue, too.
“The deputy he came down here and he was stepping in it, smelt the smell and said he was going to help us and do something about it,” McAdams said. But so far, nothing’s been done.
The property next to Carr’s home is owned by Johnny Garrison, but the trailers on the property are owned and managed by Steve West. Carr said she’s reached out to them, too.
“We called Johnny Garrison and he told us not to call him, so then we called Steve West, the man he’s renting to,” McAdams said. “He did a temporary fix and then it would go up again and flood our whole property.”
WVUA 23 reached out to West, who he said he’s has been in contact with Carr often, but this is the first he’s heard about the sewage issue.
