I fear that I have depleted the canon of western writers. So far, I have referenced Kafka, Gogol, Orwell, Gandhi, Lewis Carroll, and Kafka (admittedly, I find Joseph Heller uninspiring, and references to Proust are just short-hand for long-windedness). But this time, the New York State Department of Health has gone one better, and I might have to up my game. I have to go Etgar Keret on this one.
Last week, I noticed that the water bill in my park in northern New York had more than doubled from around $1,300 per month to $2,900. Aggregate bills that I gave tenants remained constant at about $1,250. That indicated that there was probably a leak in the line between the master meter at the street and the tenants’ meters.[1]
By way of background – there are three ways to pass on the cost of water that is purchased by a park from a town or utility company to tenants:
- Ratio Utility Billing System, or RUBS. Under a RUBS method, aggregate water costs to the park are allocated among tenants using an apportionment formula that may take into account occupancy, square footage, or numbers of water fixtures;
- Direct Billing Under a direct billing system, the town or water utility installs meters at all of the homes and bills tenants directly; and,
- Indirect Billing Under an indirect billing system, the owner installs meters at each lot. The town or utility bills the park owner for total water usage. The park owner bills each resident for their actual consumption at the same rate as that charged by the water supplier. The water supplier is in privity with the park owner rather than with the tenants, and the park owner is on the hook for the water supplier’s bill regardless of whether residents cough up their share.
Indirect billing is the system that favors park owners least, but it is the most common. In a direct billing system, the water supplier, rather than the park owner, assumes residents’ credit risk. RUBS systems allow owners to push the risk of leaks onto residents. RUBS and direct billing systems are both rare. Most towns and water utilities don’t want the administrative headache and credit risk associated with direct billing. Although RUBS systems are legal in New York State, they are unfair to tenants because they require that residents who use water parsimoniously pay the same as water hogs, and because, as mentioned above, they require tenants to pay for water main leaks. So – indirect billing systems are the rule, rather than the exception.
My park in northern New York is on town water and uses an indirect billing system. This means that, every month, I receive one bill for aggregate water usage from the town, and I send out sixty-five bills to residents for their individual water usage. Since tenants are not billed for water that seeps out of the main before it reaches their meters, I am on the hook for the difference between the amount that I am obligated to pay to the town and the amount that I collect from residents. As discussed above, in most months, I owe anywhere from $1,300 to $1,500 to the town, and I collect about $1,250. The $50 to $250 that seeps into the ground is a cost of doing business. I can eat a cost of that size, but an additional monthly cost of $1,650 means that there is a big hole in the underground pipes that I need to plug before my kids’ orthodonture leaks out of it.
Finding breaks in underground pipes is a three-step process:
- First, you listen for leaks on the lines. This is done by attaching a special listening device – essentially, a stethoscope – to the curb stop or water riser at each home. If you hear a distinctive type of hiss, you know there is a leak somewhere in the vicinity.
- Second, you locate your water mains. If the person you purchased the park from gave you a detailed map at closing, you are a member of the lucky minority. Most park owners have only vague idea of where their water mains are. If the pipes are metal, they can be located using a metal detector. If they are PVC, you need ground penetrating radar to find them. This is a tedious and time-consuming process performed using expensive, hard-to-use equipment
- Third, you correlate. Once you know which line the leak is on, you use a correlator to locate the position of the leak. A sensor is put on one end of the line and another sensor is put on the other end. Both shoot out sound vibrations toward the leak. The correlator then locates the leak by calculating the time it takes for the out-going vibrations to bounce off the leak and return to the applicable sensor. To do this correctly, you need to know the material and the diameter of the leaking pipe.
If you want to skip steps two and three, you can dig a hole in the vicinity of the hiss and look for a leak. That is a more-invasive and less-precise but sometimes quicker option.
I was in the park in northern New York last week to listen for leaks. To do that, we had to attach the end of the stethoscope to the water riser under each home. That is how I (well, Mike, the manager of that park) found myself under the home of a resident who I will call Eli Ross. To access the riser, Mike had to remove two skirting panels and crawl toward the center of the home underneath it. Just in front of those panels, directly between the opening in the skirting and the water riser, was a puddle of shit. Eli’s septic pipe had cracked just below the spot where it comes out from under the home. The pipe travels above-ground at a shallow pitch in the crawl-space below the home for about forty feet from that spot to the place where it enters the ground to feed the septic tank. The pool was on the ground below the section of the pipe at the top of the run, directly beneath the place where the pipe joined the bottom of the home.
Mike said, “I aint crawlin in there”. I thought, briefly, of leading from ahead, but then said, “Neither would I.”
Eli is on disability; his wife, who works in town, once pulled us aside and told us to treat him gingerly, because he can be jumpy. Shortly after I bought the park, Mike, Mike’s father and some guys from their church installed new skirting on their home for free. The following winter, Eli got angry at Mike for asking him to park his car off the street to allow the plow guy to clear the roads. Their relationship has not improved since. He yells at Mike and threatens to sue when Mike walks by. I am the good cop, but even I know that I tread on thin ice when I speak with him. He rarely leaves the house, picks up the phone eagerly on the first ring, is large, pale and, I believe, bipolar.
Eli and his wife own their own home. Under the rules of the park, residents who own their homes are responsible for water and septic hook-ups from the ground up. An above-ground break in the septic line is the tenant’s responsibility. After we found the leak but before I left for home, I knocked on Eli’s door to tell him about the issue. He disagreed with me about the existence of a leak:
-There’s no septic problem.
-Uh, yes there is.
-If there was a problem, we would know about it.
I was standing on the steps. Eli was in the doorway in his boxer shorts and a tee shirt that revealed nine inches of belly. I could smell the leak coming out from behind the skirting six feet from where I stood. It was early afternoon on a lovely spring day and Eli needed a shave. Since this is a BYO blog, readers can insert further sensory details that show, rather than tell.
-Have a look. You need to fix it.
On the drive home, Eli’s wife called me to say that we needed to fix the leak. I reminded her of her responsibility under the rules. She said that she would have a plumber come out to fix it, and send us the bill. I said that, to the extent the problem was below-grade we would, of course, attend to it, and that I would do with her bill what she does with mine. I also asked her to make sure that Mike was present whenever her plumber came to see it.
The next day, I got the following text from Eli:
This is Eli from 26G. I had 2 different plumbers here this weekend and both say its underground and they gave me the phone numbers to The City of Hebron Code Enforcement and to the Health inspector. They also said I should let you have the chance to fix the problem. Thank You
My response was, “Contact Mike”.
Mid-morning the next day, my phone rang. It was Mike.
-The guy is fucken crazy.
-You get him a new tin hat?
-So, I get Luke Flask to come with me. The guy who jets the sewers?
-Uh-huh.
-And Eli comes out shouting, and tells us that, if we don’t leave, he is going to hurt us.
-He needs to take his meds.
-So, we left. And after that, Flask called the two plumbers Eli said had looked at it. Neither had seen it – they just spoke with him over the phone. They wouldn’t come out because he wouldn’t pay their service charge.
-You really can’t make this shit up.
Shortly thereafter, my phone rang again. It was the zoning officer, looking for me. Eli had called him. I explained what had happened.
-You tell him to get a new tin hat?
-Heh.
-We want to fix the problem. He won’t let us.
-Just try to take care of it when you can. You don’t want State Environmental involved.
Then, my phone rang, and it was an officer from State Environmental. That’s where we get into Etgar Keret territory. In Keret’s story Snot, a father brings his son to a Chinese acupuncturist in Tel Aviv who speaks accented English, is just learning Hebrew, and is, apparently, married to an Israeli woman. The father contemplates retreating to the men’s room to jerk off while his son receives his treatment, but he decides not to, because the Chinese consider sperm to be a source of energy. Here is a short passage from another Keret story, Pick a Color:
God entered the yellow church on the disabled ramp. He was in a wheelchair too; He had once lost a woman too. He was silvery. Not the cheap, glittery silver of a banker’s BMW, but a muted, matte silver. Once, as He was gliding among the silvery stars with his silver beloved, a gang of golden gods attacked them. When they were kids, God had once beaten one of them up, a short, skinny golden god who had now grown up and returned with his friends…[2]
Keret’s world is not the Twilight Zone. It is Twilight Zone on psychedelics and Red Bull.
The health enforcement officer told me that Mr. Ross had given him a detailed description of the health code violation that we were responsible for, and that we needed to fix the issue. I remembered that diplomacy is the art of saying, ‘Good doggy’ while scrambling to find a club, a rock, a pointed stick or bear spray:
-We tried! He won’t give us access.
-Is there sewage at the site?
-That’s the problem.
-On the ground?
-Yes, sir. Shit flows downhill.
-If there is exposed sewage outside the skirting, I need to shut the park down. You need to clean it up.
-We can’t! He won’t let us get at the pipe!
-Don’t you have a process in place for this?
-Ordinarily, we fix it. But he won’t let us do that.
-Can’t you evict him?
-There’s an eviction moratorium. We can’t evict anyone now.
-You should get law enforcement involved.
Aren’t you law enforcement?, I thought.
-I will give him a ten-day notice. That will start the process when and if the moratorium is lifted. Can you please ask him to grant us access?
-I will be out there Wednesday. If it is not fixed, I will have to cite you.
-Can you please ask him to give us access so that we can address the problem before you cite us?
-You need to involve law enforcement.
We have called the cops in similar situations in the past. They have told us, ‘We can’t babysit’, ‘This is a civil matter – call the Civil Division’, or ‘Call the Health Department. It’s their problem’. I was on the phone with the health department now. The Civil Division has told us that we should call the cops.
-Please make sure Mike is there when you look at it.
That was three days ago. Since then it has been radio silence, but the shit has continued to accumulate below the cracked elbow under Eli’s home. It will continue to do so until it reaches a non-longer sustainable level. At that point, Eli will call the DOH, scoop up some of the sewage in a shovel, and throw it against a specially-purchased fan placed outside his home with an extra-long extension cord.
Keret once told an audience that, when his first story was published, he ran over to his brother’s house to tell him the good news. When he arrived, his brother was heading out with his dog for a walk, so Etgar joined him. After some time, the dog shat on the street and the two brothers realized that the only paper they had with them was the copy of Etgar’s newly-published story that he had brought for his brother to read, so… they put the story to a hitherto-unexpected use. In a more perfect world, they, a silver-hued G-d who was bullied in His youth, or a sexually frustrated single Tel Aviv father, would have had my friend the health officer’s employment contract with the DOH at hand when they confronted that problem.
[1] Water is measured by volume. Some towns measure by the gallon, or by the hekagallon. Other commonly-used units include the cubic foot, the hekacubic foot and, less often, the dekacubic foot. I use the dollar.
[2] Etgar Keret, Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, trans. Miriam Shlesinger, 2010
A shitty situation.
You really can’t make this shit up.
Since you can not act sane in an insane world, I would borrow a hat from the MAD HATTER, AND JOIN IN THE FUN.