St. Louis Park water main breaks for the second time

Many residents of suburban St. Louis Park are reeling after a second water main break this weekend flooded basements with tens of thousands of gallons of water.

City officials are hosting a meeting Monday night and Dimi Lalos plans to be there. He is a homeowner who is losing patience after his finished basement was flooded a second time. He is one of roughly 55 residents and business owners who have been impacted.

The St. Louis Park City Council will talk about the water main breaks in their regularly scheduled city council meeting tonight at 6:30 p.m.

Below is a transcript of the interview that has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

I'm sorry about your situation. So, you heard the sound of water from the first main break, which was what May 21, early in the morning?

Correct. So at about 4:45 a.m., my wife rolled over in bed and said, “Hey, I think our daughter left the water in the bathroom on.” And so I rolled out of bed, went to investigate and saw that wasn't the issue. So I went down into our basement and water was spewing out of our toilet at an immense rate. And so we actually called the city non-emergency line at that point, probably at 4:50 a.m.

We were told that it was probably an issue on our end, but that they would talk to the city water department. And so we proceeded to call everybody under the sun for the next probably 20 minutes until I called the non-emergency line back to say it's still going and there's still a problem. And we were told at that point again, that there was probably a problem on our end, and there was nothing they could do at that point.

You have a finished basement?

Yeah, we had a full living room. We had a full bedroom and we had a bathroom down there as well as a laundry room and a storage room. And so we had ultimately about 16 inches of sewage in our basement — it destroyed all of our mechanicals in that first go around. So furnace, water heater, sump pump, washer and dryer were all replaced out of pocket.

So just those we were already $23,000 out of pocket. Our restoration company had just finished their job on the Thursday before the second break. And we had paid our first half of that bill and that was $15,000. So we were above or at about $38,000 out of pocket at that point. Not counting the second break and not counting a bunch of the other fixes that we still needed to do.

When did the second break happen?

It happened at about 11:30 p.m. and bled into the next day. Our water softener throughout Friday had been doing a recycle. And so we kept hearing water and we'd go down to investigate and make sure it wasn't more water coming in.

And then at 11:30 p.m. I woke up I heard the noise and I thought maybe it's [recycling] again. And I waited about three or four minutes. And I realized that's odd, it's still going. So I walked downstairs and discovered another five inches of water in our basement.

At that point, I actually legitimately started laughing because that was all I could do. It was just unbelievable. And there's almost no words to connect how much frustration there is. And probably for the next 48 hours I'd say after that, both my wife and I, and we have two small children, we all probably felt like zombies just kind of wandering about, without much to say, because we didn't know what to say.

Is your homeowners insurance paying for any of this?

No. So our homeowners insurance does not. We learned after the fact that there is a specific sewer rider that you can get for homeowners coverage that we were unaware of before that, so homeowners covers nothing. The city has an insurance policy, which we just learned on Thursday, will cover up to $40,000 per home, with an aggregate cap of $2 million, which is better than they were initially thinking.

The initial thought was that there might only be about $5,000 and city insurance. So there may be about $40,000 and insurance for us on the city side. But all in even before the second break, we probably were talking $100,000 to redo our basement alone.

A city spokesperson says there'll be a discussion of financial relief at the city council meeting Monday night, what are you hoping to hear?

For me, my hope, one had been that the second break didn't happen. Because I was of the position that we would ultimately as a family be willing to kind of meet them somewhat in the middle. And say, maybe our bathroom doesn't get fixed and we cover that cost down the line. But after the second break, I'm really struggling to see how I can do that and say “I'll meet you somewhere in the middle.”

I actually had had the opportunity to look at their meeting minutes or proposed minutes for the meeting Monday. And my understanding is the proposal has not significantly changed from the original proposal from the first meeting, which was $30,000 in grants. And then $30,000 in a 0 percent interest loan. And so for example, our home, if there's $100,000 in damage, insurance would cover $40,000 of that the city would cover $30,000 in a grant.

I understand some of the neighbors were thinking of court action, would that be something you'd consider?

Before, the second break, I personally was not. I'm an attorney by trade, actually, so I knew the headache and the cost associated with that. But now after the second break, and kind of seeing most likely where we're going with the financial proposals, I'd actually say I'm probably falling in the litigation camp at this point, which is amazing. And I did not think that would happen.

After you clean up would you move?

We've had that discussion, my wife and I. So we actually moved into our home, this home, a month ago. And we moved here from eight blocks away. And we moved here specifically because we loved St. Louis Park. We loved where we were at. We loved the friends that we had and we wanted to stay there long term and this to be our essentially forever home.

And now, a month later, both of us have had that same discussion with one another to say, maybe once we get this picked up, or even if we, you know, sell it before then, we've had that discussion to say do we move? Because is this going to happen again in two weeks? Is it going to happen again in six months? Is it going to happen in two years when we put everything back together? It's an amazing about face just the level of frustration with the event, as well as the city's response to it.

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