Casey Morris’ sewage overflow nightmare began, as so many do in Baltimore, in her basement toilet, which was suddenly and inexplicably clogged.

It soon shifted to a less typical place: her refrigerator.

“I went to open my freezer and it stunk,” she said, recalling that day two years ago. “I took out the ice and it was yellow. It smelled horrible!”

The odor was unmistakable. Realizing that her tap water was contaminated with human excrement, the horrified southwest Baltimore woman stopped using it for drinking or cooking and disabled the icemaker.

She reported what happened to the city via 311, and used a plunger when needed for the toilet.

The worst was yet to come.

A month later, she heard a strange gurgling sound upon flushing the upstairs toilet of her brick rowhouse in the Irvington neighborhood. Instinctively, she raced down to the basement.

“I lifted up the toilet, and it was filled with, well, feces, It was nearly up to the brim,” she said, recalling the experience to The Brew.

After that August 17, 2022 eruption, there were three more basement sewage back-ups (in October, November and the following January) that sent excrement, bits of toilet paper and globs of hair (“definitely other people’s hair, not mine”) gushing up out of the basement toilet and bathtub and onto the floor.

The 34-year-old first-time homeowner recounted how she dealt with the onslaught each time. By donning rubber gloves and cleaning the mess herself, by throwing out soiled clothing and towels, and by having water trucked in to drink and shower with.

She gave up her two dogs because, having gone back and forth to the hospital for gastrointestinal symptoms and seeing the same symptoms in her dogs, she worried she couldn’t take care of them.

“I was so stressed, my hair started falling out. Oh, my god, I withdrew from people,” she said. “It was huge.”

“You’re telling me I just have brown water? As if that’s supposed to be acceptable? It was like gaslighting”  – Casey Morris.

But Morris, a detail-oriented disability claims analyst for the U.S. Social Security Administration, was also not about to shrug off the experience.

Arguing that Baltimore’s failure to maintain its sewer pipes resulted in the unpleasant and unhealthy sequence of overflows, she sued for negligence and nuisance. The city settled her claim for $69,080.

Asked if the amount covers all she went through, Morris paused and chose her words carefully. Describing herself  “a realistic person” and the payment “a decent offer,” she said the money “will help me move forward.”

Morris had no hesitation, however, when asked how city officials could have better handled the situation.

“It was so frustrating. I wanted them to just help me,” she said, recalling how one city employee hung up on her and another, who pumped out her clogged sewage line, insisted the fecal-smelling discolored water coming out of her upstairs bathroom tap was unrelated.

“You’re telling me I just have brown water? As if that’s supposed to be acceptable?” she recalled saying to the city employee.

Morris went upstairs and filmed what came out of the tap and then brought a gallon jug of it outside for him to see and smell.

“They’re trying to convince you of something that’s not true – it’s like gaslighting,” she said. “No one wanted to take any type of accountability.”

4,648 Backups in a Year

To varying degrees, Morris’ experience is shared by thousands of city residents every year.

In 2023, there were 4,648 sewage backups reported in Baltimore, according to quarterly reports by the Department of Public Works (DPW).

Most residents endure the foul eruptions, but a small number seek help from the city’s clean-up assistance programs.

And a very small number sue the city and reach settlements, like Morris did, that are then quietly approved by the city’s three top elected officials (Mayor Brandon Scott, City Council President Nick Mosby, Comptroller Bill Henry), the city solicitor and the director of DPW who sit on the Board of Estimates.

“The city always blames residential sewage overflows on rags and grease, on the citizens,” said attorney Jane Santoni, who represented Morris. “But our expert says, if the sewer system is acting properly, then rags and grease shouldn’t be a problem.”

Santoni acknowledges the challenges of aging infrastructure (“I grew up here, I love Baltimore. I know you’ve got a hundred-year-old sewer system”), but says that doesn’t let the city off the hook.

“You have to find a way to repair the system so that your citizens don’t have raw sewage pouring into their house. That’s on you, guys. That’s the law. They’re your pipes,” Santoni told The Brew.

“Find a way to repair the system. That’s on you, guys. They’re your pipes”  – attorney Jane Santoni.

DPW has said it is working to improve sewer capacity by adding additional sewer mains under Phase II of its 20-year-old Modified Consent Decree with the federal government.

The agency also says it is implementing a plan to proactively inspect large sewer mains.

Whatever they’re doing, it  isn’t enough, as Santoni sees it.

“It’s been a terrible problem that the city has tried, in my opinion, to solve with very little money,” she said.

“In many of our cases, there’s evidence of negligence. Things the city knew about but didn’t take care of. Or they didn’t take care of them properly. Or they actually made things worse.”

One Home, 13 Overflows

Some recent examples from publicly available material on file with the Board of Estimates, DPW and Baltimore Circuit Court:

• Dennis Glover, of Hanlon Park, was hit with 13 sewage overflows, starting in May 2020. The first came shortly after he purchased the home and renovated it, including adding new plumbing. In addition to cleaning up himself after these overflows, he also paid a cleaning company to perform that work, installed interior clean-outs and replaced two floors. A $150,000 settlement was approved by the BOE in June.

• Shelby Harrington, of Guilford, had five basement back-ups in 2022 with sewage soaking her hallway drywall, as well as bathroom drywall, vanity and rugs, among other items. Cleaning the mess each time gave her headaches and nausea. Worried about her children’s health, Harrington stopped using the basement or letting her children go into it, concerned they could be exposed to raw sewage. A$60,000 settlement was approved by the BOE in July.

• Cherring Spence, of northwest Baltimore, had sewage erupt from her basement toilet four times in February 2021, creating such a nauseating odor she had to sleep in a hotel each time. The series of overflows destroyed the basement wall and floor. A $55,000 settlement was approved by the BOE in November 2022.

• Raymond Grewe and Nancy Neely, living near Patterson Park, had an especially miserable experience. After a sewage flood in April 2017, a plumber determined that tree roots – the city’s responsibility – were interfering with the sewer pipe. After the city took no action and Grewe, the homeowner, tried to head off future overflows by capping the sink and shower drain, the home was flooded a second time with raw sewage.

Then, due to mistakes by the crew the city sent to his home, “a sinkhole developed, causing the pipe to break again and more sewage to spew into the house.”

“Despite requests, [the city] denied liability and did not take any steps to clean or repair” the home, the couple’s lawsuit charged. In addition to calling in professionals, the couple “had to shop vac the raw sewage (human excrement) themselves and remove their saturated items.”

A $24,999 settlement was awarded to each of them in July 2022. But the couple had one last challenge: getting the city to issue the checks.

Months passed with no checks issued. They had to file a second lawsuit to get their money.

Dealing with basement sewage eruptions can easily cost a homeowner $30,000 to $40,000.

Santoni, who has been handling such cases in Baltimore for the past decade, estimates the costs of dealing with basement sewage eruptions at a typical Baltimore rowhouse can be easily $30,000 to $40,000 and often much more.

“It’s not only disgusting and humiliating, it’s hugely expensive,” she said, ticking off the list of typical expenses:

A professional company might charge $5,000 to do the initial clean-up, then $10,000 or more to tear out and replace drywall and possibly flooring.

Then there’s the cost to remove and replace all that’s damaged, from clothes and other personal items to the HVAC system, water heater and washer and dryer.

“The first case I handled was in Cherry Hill, and this poor guy had it happen like 20 times,” Santoni recalled. “And the city each time would either say, ‘sorry, it was rags and grease’ or ‘here’s $500, go away.’”

EPA to City: Do More

Community members and advocates, including representatives of Blue Water Baltimore and Clean Water Action, have been pressing City Hall for years to expand the scope of Baltimore’s emergency sewage clean-up assistance programs mandated as part of a revised federal consent decree.

Last year,  the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) stepped up the pressure, ordering Baltimore to broaden the assistance to include all backups caused by city-owned infrastructure, not just the small percentage associated with heavy rainfall.

(Most building overflows are “dry weather” backups that can happen anytime, rain or shine, as a result of  sewer mainline collapses or water main breaks.)

But the Scott administration fought the federal order and today, more than a year later, the city has not complied.

“This issue is currently under review as DPW continues negotiations with EPA,” says an agency spokeswoman.

Blue Water Baltimore’s Alice Volpitta and Clean Water Action’s Jennifer Kunze have denounced the city for refusing to take responsibility for the backups and called the delay “backroom dealing.”

In addition to expanding the city’s cleanup assistance program, the city needs to publicize them better, they argue. (Morris said had she known about them “I definitely would have applied for them.)

City Council members have pressed the issue with DPW, noting that only a fraction of the $2 million allocated annually to fund the program is ever paid.

How much has the city’s Expedited Reimbursement Program – which helps cover cleanup costs after the fact and has a $5,000 cap per household, per incident – been paying out?

At a June budget hearing, then Deputy DPW Director Richard Luna provided some answers:

• 27 residents submitted applications, but the program paid $0 in fiscal 2023.

• In fiscal 2024, the program paid out $14,800, covering three of the 33 addresses that applied.

• A separate direct assistance program spent $91,800 to assist 14 people during the the same two fiscal years.

The skimpy reimbursement payouts drew criticism from Councilman Kristerfer Burnett.

“There’s a $2 million allocation for that program, and what we’ve seen, year-over-year, is a very small number of households approved,” Burnett said. “It’s hard to grasp, considering we’ve had thousands of backups per year.”

Luna noted the many criteria that an application must meet in order to be considered “a qualified event,” including that the backup must have occurred during wet weather.

DPW Director Khalil Zaied stressed the cost of expanding the program. He told the committee that in 2021, the price tag for making the kind of changes the EPA is requiring was estimated at $14 million.

That figure, he later acknowledged, included all sewage backups citywide, not just those resulting from a problem on the public side of the sewage line. Advocates contend the city has exaggerated these costs and estimate expanding both program would cost less than $6 million.

Fighting a “Nuisance” Verdict

As Santoni sees it, city officials are anxious about their liability given the thousands of backups annually and the costly damage they cause.

“They don’t want to open up the floodgate,” said Santoni.

That’s her takeaway from the city’s strong pushback in one of her basement backup cases which, instead of settling, went to trial in March.

The jury awarded the homeowners more than Santoni asked for and found the city guilty of causing a nuisance for the 2019 basement sewage overflow that continued unabated for 17 hours after the city was notified.

The city Law Department appealed the verdict, arguing among other things that in Maryland “there must be a continuousness or recurrence of things” to constitute a nuisance.

Such a requirement does not exist, according to Santoni. And even if it did, the sewage troubles in this case were not brief ones.

“Try living with raw excrement flowing in your house for 17 hours and see what kind of nuisance you think it is,” she said.

In a motion filed on behalf of homeowners Theresa and Christopher Abel, of Morrell Park, Santoni argued the overflow “was not akin to a single act like a rear-end car collision, but an ongoing problem.”

“The smell of raw human feces remained for weeks after the spewing stopped,” she noted. “It prevented them from using their bedroom for months.”

The file on the case, currently pending in the Appellate Court of Maryland, is hefty. The folders The Brew reviewed – hundreds of pages of filings, briefs, motions, transcripts, depositions by expert witnesses and more – formed a pile more than a foot thick.

“I think they’re very worried about the nuisance verdict here, Santoni said, noting that most basement backup cases eventually end with a settlement.

“It’s easier for them to just to let these things happen and then pay out. It’s probably a lot less money than just fixing everything,” she observed. “But, meanwhile, people are suffering.”

Replacing the Water Main

Morris hasn’t fully recovered from her sewage ordeal, but she’s hopeful that day is coming soon.

Wearing special shoes she reserves for the occasion, she brought a visitor down to her basement on a recent afternoon. A faint scent of sewage lingered.

Until she can get a professional service to do a deep clean, Morris is not comfortable using the space.

”I actually don’t even like to go down there,” she said.

As for the city water coming out of her tap, she will use it to shower, but not for drinking. A delivery man dropped off a case of bottled water on the day The Brew visited.

For the past year, the water provided by DPW to Morris and her neighbors comes not from underground pipes, but from surface piping.

The water lines can be seen running along her street and others in the neighborhood, some of them dripping water onto the street or spewing water into the air.

Morris remembers seeing a DPW billboard on Beechfield Avenue describing the project around the time she filed her suit against the city.

“It says they’re replacing all the water lines in this area,” she said. “I have to wonder if my complaint had something to do with that.”

DPW points to the $11.7 million project as “part of its commitment to modernizing its aging water main infrastructure.”

The work underway in the Beechfield and Yale Heights neighborhood consists of the replacement and rehabilitation of 3.7 miles of water main, a spokeswoman told The Brew.

The work is scheduled to be completed in October 2025.

Morris looks forward to that day and hopes it will give her confidence in city water once again.

Don’t Roll Over

“Don’t bother trying to fight the city, you’ll never win,” she remembers a neighbor telling her.

But Morris says her experience shows otherwise. Don’t roll over, she advises others.

”I don’t think the city is used to dealing with people who educate themselves and who will say, ‘No, this isn’t right.’ They rely on people who take what they say at face value. I’m not one of them.”

She’s not letting her guard down either, considering the ongoing service disruptions she and her neighbors continue to experience.

“The water goes out at least once a week. The same old dance,” Morris pointed out. “I still have to call 311 weekly.”

To reach a reporter: editors@baltimorebrew.com.