CINCINNATI — Caroline Melson moved into her Hyde Park home in 2017, after paying for extra inspections to ensure that the basement had no water damage and would stay dry.
Five years later, her basement flooded twice during intense rainstorms in spring 2022. She had no idea how or why, but she got six inches of water in her basement and garage. She assumed that the Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati would pay for the damage, because it appeared to be a sewer backup with murky water gushing through her floor drains.
“We were running stuff out of the garage to my neighbor’s house to save whatever we could,” Melson said. “Then I called MSD. I remember I was on my front porch, it was dark, and the guy came to the door and said, 'It’s your fault.'”
MSD receives, on average, between 3,000 to 6,000 reports of potential sewer backups each year. But only a fraction of those residents are offered cleanup or reimbursement for damages. Many mistakenly believe the problem is with the public sewer line, especially when they see wastewater in their basement.
“It’s gross, you can see stuff like floating around,” Melson said. “You don’t know what you’re walking in.”
The WCPO 9 I-Team interviewed Melson and another Hamilton County resident, Sonia Hissett, who both suffered from suspected sewer backups in 2024, to provide advice to anyone who finds themselves in this unfortunate situation.
After a particularly rainy stretch last week, MSD investigated 22 reports of possible sewer backups since May 1.
“Our preliminary findings lead us to believe there were only two capacity-related issues in the public sewer,” said MSD spokesperson Deb Leonard.
That means these other recent basement floods were caused by something else — typically clogs or broken or collapsed sections of private sewer pipes, or overland flooding.
The sewer backup program has operated since January 2004 and is required under a court-ordered consent decree. Like many older cities, much of the Cincinnati area has combined sewers that carry both sewage and rainwater in the same pipes. Some of the oldest pipes are made of brick or wood and are more than 100 years old.
In Melson’s case, a tree root was to blame for her 2022 flood.
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“There was a tree root in the line that goes down the driveway. There was a massive tree out front that was on the city’s property. But it was affecting my line,” Melson said.
Thankfully, she had a service line rider on her homeowner’s insurance policy that reimbursed her for what she lost and paid to repair the pipe.
Two years later, her basement flooded again during another heavy rainstorm. She called MSD again.
“I’m like, there’s no way it’s my fault. I had this line done,” Melson said. “I see them (MSD) on my street and they’re walking up and down with poles, and I’m like 'hey what did you guys find, and they’re like oh they’re going to let you know.' I just got some letter in the mail that it’s not their fault. That doesn’t mean anything to me.”
When MSD refused to pay for her 2024 loss, she appealed to the federal court. There she learned from an MSD engineer, who watched a video of her internal pipes, that a different portion had sagged. Again, the public sewer overflow was not to blame.
She reopened her insurance claim to cover the second repair to her pipe. In all, her insurance company covered $35,000 in repairs and damaged property from her basement floods.
Melson strongly recommended adding a service line rider to a homeowner's insurance policy, especially for an aging home in an older neighborhood.
“It’s a bummer that people just don’t know. I know somebody who didn’t have that rider and found out what it cost. It’s not much. And they’re like we would have taken it, but their agent hadn’t offered it to them,” Melson said.
She also wished that MSD representatives had been more transparent and talked to her earlier in the process about what they suspected the problem to be.
“I even at one point said I want to move to another city where they support people better. Because we’re supposed to be in a partnership. I pay taxes. So, help me and I’ll do my part. But help me know what my part is,” Melson said.
That’s a frequent complaint heard by Matthew Fitzsimmons, senior supervising attorney with Legal Aid Society of Greater Cincinnati, who oversees the sewer backup program as ombudsman and reports to a federal judge.
“There is a desire for more clear and upfront communication from MSD when someone is going through a backup,” Fitzsimmons said. “It is something that we hear that homeowners want to know … they want information. It’s part of an ongoing discussion we have with MSD.”
MSD will respond to calls from homeowners who have water in their basements 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to investigate whether an overflow of the public sewer is to blame.
“It’s very traumatic when you have a sewer backup,” said MSD director Diana Christy.“It is frustrating for homeowners because what we can’t always do is say what it is. Sometimes we're able to rule out that it was the public sewer, but we’re not able to give them the answers that they want.”
MSD is also not responsible for flooding damage caused by backups in private sewers or the lateral lines that run from the public sewer to a home or building. More than 85% of sewer backups are caused by clogs or breaks in private sewer pipes.
“That really oftentimes involves hiring a plumber because every property has its own unique circumstances in plumbing, especially in the older areas of our city,” Christy said. “There are things that property owners probably don’t know about the plumbing in their homes.”
It has been a long year of recovery for Hissett, a doctor of nursing practice. Her Westwood practice, Oasis Medical Group, which specializes in care for veterans, was on the first floor of a Glenmore Avenue building when it flooded on May 8, 2024.
“It was catastrophic,” Hissett said. “I had never experienced anything like that before.”
Since a public sewer overflow was to blame, MSD hired Brock Restoration to clean up the water damage to her office, she said.
But the destruction was so severe that Hissett said she was forced to shut down her medical practice for several weeks while crews cut out walls and brought in huge drying blowers.
“We attempted to see our veterans, but a majority of our veterans have PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). We had a few instances where the veterans had adverse reactions. Two of them ran out of the office and sat in their car and wouldn’t even come in,” Hissett said, about the loud blowers. “For our combat veterans, it brought them back to bad times.”
Wet walls and mold also caused the air quality to deteriorate in the office, Hissett said.
“Everyone was having chronic runny noses, migraines, my poor mother, she’s out there taking medications constantly because she’s sneezing and sick,” said Hissett, whose mother works as the office receptionist.
Hissett reopened her practice at a very limited capacity while she shared a few operable offices and then moved to a new location four months later. She expected to be reimbursed for the tens of thousands of dollars in lost income.
But the consent decree specifically does not require MSD to reimburse for lost income or payroll.
“No small business has any protection once it’s deemed a flood. Unless you have flood insurance. You’re not protected by (MSD’s) policy whatsoever,” Hissett said. “Had I had the flood insurance … we would have been reimbursed for our lost income.”
Hissett estimated her total losses at $70,000, including missed income and employee payroll, ruined furniture and medical equipment, and moving costs.
MSD offered to reimburse her $2,065 for damaged property, based on a depreciated value. Hissett has not accepted it and appealed to the federal court.
“They depreciated all of my tangible things by 75%, saying everything was 10 years old because I was not able to provide receipts for everything. Even my toilet paper and paper towels,” said Hissett, who also said her receipts were in a box that was soaked in the flood and went out in the trash.
“I think it would have been an easier process had they brought a representative,” Hissett said. “There was no education, there was no ‘Hey, this is how we do it.’”
Note: You can report sewer backups by phone at (513) 352-4900 or online 24/7. They must be reported to MSD within 48 hours of discovery to be potentially eligible for claims.
MSD’s SBU Program is administered in accordance with a federal Consent Decree. Per our SBU damage claims webpage at https://msdgc.org/programs/sewer-backup-program/claims/ [msdgc.org], the following types of expenses are eligible for reimbursement if eligibility criteria are met:
• Loss of personal property (e.g., furniture, miscellaneous storage items, appliances). MSD reimburses the current (depreciated) value of damaged personal property.
• Structural damage to the interior of the property (e.g., flooring, drywall, furnace, hot water heater, electrical). MSD reimburses the reasonable replacement value for structural damage, including critical mechanicals, or the equivalent diminution in value.
• Reasonable expenses incurred to hire your own professional cleanup contractor, provided you were eligible for cleaning/mitigation services from MSD's contractor but did not receive them.
The SBU Program does not provide reimbursement for the following types of expenses:
• Damage to property or items outside of the impacted building.
• Loss of wages, rent, or income.
• Services performed by a plumber on a private building sewer or internal plumbing.
