Herring Sanitation's office has been taking calls since Sunday about sewages pumps that can't keep up with the high water table. Of course this is due to the visit of Hurricane Irene. Jim and Jason are trying to coach people into trying to do their best to be patient and conserve water usage. When that's not possible we go out and check the pumps and possibly reset the floats.  We explain how the water is currently flowing through their yard.  The amount of water that the sewage pumps have to try to deal with can burn these costly pumps out quickly. With the yards flooded and the septic working at full capacity there is no place to pump the water to.

In some cases we are able to help pump off the ground water to a different location in the home owner’s yard with pumps that we supply. Yards are flooded and septic systems are under water. We try not to pump the Septic Tanks out with our pump trucks as this would cost the homeowners too much money.  We could keep pumping for hours and easily pump 3000 gallons out of a 1000 gallon septic tank. Once the water is in our trucks it's considered septic not ground water and has to be dumped at an approved (expensive) dumping facility.  As a family business, we try not to spend anybodies money differently than they would spend their own.

In these conditions, the calls that come in are not only about pump up systems.  Herring Sanitation has had a few calls from people with collapsed tanks.  The water pressure got too much on the outside of the tank and down they went leaving a surprising hole in the yard.  We quickly secure the area and file all necessary paper work with the Board of Health and schedule their replacement tank. So we will be busy for the next week or so taking care of all these emergencies.