By Karen Gutierrez
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Terry Norton, a field technician for the sanitation district, checks a sewer bar cage near the Licking River in Taylor Park, Newport. Such bar cages stop some of the bigger pieces of trash carried by storm drains. The Cincinnati Enquirer/ERNEST COLEMAN

FORT THOMAS - The sign popped up a few weeks ago in Jane Daly's back yard.

"Warning," it read in big letters. "Pollution may occur during & following rainfall."

Daly was alarmed. Three of her children play in the creek behind her Fort Thomas home. Neighborhood kids catch crawdads there in the summer. What on earth was going on?

"I was concerned because of the way it was worded - it almost sounded like a toxic waste dump," Daly says. "I immediately thought I wanted to take action and call and get more information."

What she found out was this: Sanitation District No. 1 has inherited a monster. For the last two months, the agency has been posting warning signs at 33 sites around Northern Kentucky where raw sewage may be entering streams during periods of heavy rain.

Daly's creek is one of the locations. Now she knows why it stinks occasionally.

WHERE THEY ARE

Thirty-three of the combined overflow systems have recently been identified. They are located near: Silver Grove: Ash Street, First & Maple streets Fort Thomas: Burney Lane, Kathy Lane, Vernon Lane, Eden Avenue Unincorporated Campbell County: Alexandria Pike between Canon and Military, Lowell Street (Newport Steel) Newport: Licking Pike, Nelson Place, Waterworks Road, Riverboat Row Bellevue: Sixth and Berry, Cassidy and Lafayette, Covert Run and Ward streets, Van Voast Avenue, Colfax Street and Interstate 471. Covington: Eastern and Adams streets, Levassor Avenue, Warren Street, Kennedy Street, Highway Avenue Park Hills: South Arlington Street, Amsterdam Road, Hamilton Road Fort Wright: Henry Clay Avenue, Marcella Drive Bromley: Steve Tanner Street Latonia: West 33rd Street Note: More than one sewer system is near some of the streets Source: Sanitation District No. 1

The sites have been around for more than 40 years, so there is no new threat to residents. At most, people might get stomach aches or diarrhea if they ingest the creek water during a polluted time, officials say.

Under federal regulations, the sanitation district is required to post warning signs at all the sites. But until recently, it had no idea just how many of them existed.

The saga began in 1994 when the district started taking over the city sewer systems in Northern Kentucky. Overnight, it went from maintaining 100 miles of lines to maintaining 1,200 miles - enough to stretch lengthwise from here to Houston.

"I think we're surprised every year by what we're finding in the city systems we've taken over," says Jeff Eger, general manager of the sanitation district. "The problems just keep growing at an exponential rate that's overwhelming."

Among the discoveries:

• Decades-old clay pipes crushed by tree roots, causing major sewage backups.

• Illegal, do-it-yourself jobs that hooked home sewage lines to stormwater drains emptying into the environment.

• An entire lawn mower stuffed inside a sewage pipe at the 2400 block of Warren Street in Covington.

• Sinkholes around Patton Street in Covington, linked to a handcrafted limestone sewer pipe from the late 1800s. Because parts of the stone had disintegrated, water was gushing in and out, creating rivulets of underground erosion. As a result, part of the road is sinking.

Then there's the situation near Daly's back yard and others. They're called combined sewer overflow systems - relics of an earlier, less environmentally conscious era.

Until the 1960s, cities were allowed to mix sewage and stormwater in special pipes used only when regular ones overflowed. During heavy rainstorms or snowmelts, extra sewage and water was carried through these pipes directly into creeks, streams and rivers.

Today, such methods are known to cause pollution. Any new pipes must be separated so that sewage, before entering the environment, is first detoxified at treatment plants. The old combined systems have been allowed to remain. But they must be constantly monitored, and under new federal rules, it's likely that many will have to be eliminated.

The district always knew about 74 such sites along the Licking and Ohio Rivers, because the state had permits on file for them. The additional 33 sites, along creeks and streams in Kenton and Campbell counties, were discovered through recent surveys. The district will get state permits for them, too, project manager Micheal Kendall says.

About half of the 33 overflow systems are located near homes, and Kendall wants to get rid of those first. But doing so is going to be expensive.

Just last week at a national conference on the combined-overflow problem, Eger learned that Portland, Ore., expects to raise its sewer rates to $65 a month by 2014 to fix all its problems.

In Northern Kentucky, "We'll be spending over half a billion over the next 10 to 15 years," Eger predicts.

Monthly sanitation bills already have jumped from $12 to $20 over the last four years, after staying the same since 1979.

Having clean waters again is worth it, says Marc Hult, a Covington resident and executive director of the Banklick Watershed Council.

"Here in Northern Kentucky, we have a legacy of respect for the environment and a history of people growing up and being able to fish and swim in the streams," Hult says.

Those experiences ought to be restored for future generations, he says.

E-mail kgutierrez@enquirer.com