Side Sewers

Maintenance & Repair of Side Sewers

The side sewer is the sewer pipe that connects a building to the sewer main located in the street. Property owners are responsible for the maintenance and repair of side sewers.

The City is responsible for sewer mains if they are located in public rights-of-way, like streets, or a utility easement dedicated to the City. This information is also found in the City of Stanwood’s Municipal Code 12.08 (link is external) and the Stanwood Comprehensive Sewer System Plan.

Sewer Main Analysis

The city performs an analysis of the sewer mains every few years as part of the Sewer System Plan Update. This analysis identifies which ones are near the end of their service life, are prone to infiltration, root clogs, sudden failures, or cannot provide the required flow capacity. The City also conducts television video inspections of the sewer system.

City ratepayers pay for the ongoing replacement and maintenance of existing lines in the sewer system. In some cases, the City may extend a sewer into a neighborhood, and in other cases, a developer build may extend a segment. In either case, the party who hooks up to that new sewer segment pays their fair share of the construction cost in addition to normal hookup fees.

The City allocates yearly budgets to rehabilitate sewer mains and extend new lines into areas that are not currently served by sewer.

Maintenance

The Public Works Wastewater Division routinely maintains the sanitary sewer mains to keep them flowing freely. Our crews inspect and clean the sanitary sewer mains on a scheduled basis, but there are sewer dos and don’ts that you can follow to keep your home’s sewer system as well as the City’s sewer system trouble-free.

The wise use of the sewage system and the performance of simple preventive maintenance will help safeguard the system and reduce costs for everyone.