Et tu, Wastewater Collection?

Carolyn here.

Tuesday July 6: Just talked with Frank James of Wastewater Collection Systems and it looks like the fix is in. He was tap dancing but essentially he said that they could not go on private property and that his worker should not have put his camera in James' sewer pipe. I asked about his worker's opinion that there was a collapsed or ruptured line. He said the worker should not have run the camera up the line w/o permission.

A few minutes later, I asked if it was possible that there was a septic tank problem; he said that the first time they were out here he got his camera up 20 or 30 feet and saw no sign of a tank.

So it is illegal for his worker but legal for him to run the camera up the sewer pipe?

He said that if sewage was not visible or could be smelled he could do nothing more. He told me that as far as he was concerned 6003 was hooked up to the city sewage line. He also said that he was assuming that there were some minor repairs which were being addressed by code.

His entire attitude was changed. When he had come to my house the day before he was relaxed and spoke fluently with few pauses or hesitations. He was also very funny and openly friendly. On the phone he sounded tense and was not fluent. He paused often as if searching for words. He was very abrupt. He told me there would not be any further attempt to observe 6003's sewage pipe and as far as he is concerned the sewage is hooked to the city and the matter is closed.

July 7, 12:00 PM: Frank James called. Told me he was in contact with code. Asked if there was any visible sewage. I said no. Said he would get back in contact with me after "code did its thing." He also told me to call him if the sewage became visible.

Guy in suit with briefcase sat on swing at 6003 with James Alverson (about 11am). After he left, James started hauling junk from the yard out to street. A few minutes later, guy in new shiny truck put all the junk in his bed and hauled it away. The junk behind the house now looks to be gone; that east of the shed (and not really visible except from my porch) is still there.

Sigh! There already has been a most welcome reduction in the amount of junk piled in the yard at 6003 and this further activity can't be anything but good. But we have what looks like a systematic effort to do as little as possible about learning whether sewage is now running into the ground instead of the City pipe, which surely is a more important problem. And until I wrote the Mayor and everybody they were anything but aggressive about the other stuff. This systematic fecklessness may or may not have started with the field people at Code but the instructions to Mr. James had to come from above. So it looks like someone high, or at least medium high, in the Tampa government has a reason to safeguard the assault at 6003 on the health and property values of the citizens Seminole Heights.