Fridley Moves Toward Licensing Sewer Cleaners

By a 4 to 1 vote, the Fridley City Council took its initial step at its meeting Monday evening to require contractors and plumbers who clean sanitary sewers in Fridley to get $35 annual licenses.

They gave the proposed licensing ordinance addition its first reading. A second reading is required to pass the ordinance. If it is okayed, probably at the Oct. 10 council meeting, it would go into effect Jan. 1, 2012.

The licensing procedure will ask for voluntary background checks on sewer contractors and is meant to educate them to have residents call the city before the contractors clean the sewers.

Fridley may become the .

The proposed licensing rule came from the city’s sewer supervisor, Greg Kottsick, who has expressed concerns in the past that when one resident has their sewer cleaned, the roots or debris from that sewer cleaning might clog up another resident’s sewer or the city’s sewer main in the street.

Council Member Ann Bolkcom, who voted against the licensing requirement, stated she didn’t think the license would get sewer cleaners or residents calling the city to ask for a video sewer inspection before having a sewer cleaned.

Council Member Jim Saefke disagreed and said he thought it would work to educate the people of the city and the contractors to call before cleaning.

Sewer Supervisor Kottsick said, “We should be the first one to be called. We want 100 percent call-in for those sewer cleanouts.”

Kottsick suggested that a call to the city might save a resident perhaps $300 if it turned out the resident didn’t need to clean the house’s sewer main after all. That’s because it could be a city sewer main in the street that is plugged, not the homeowner’s.

He said the city then would clean the public sewer main and the homeowners might not have to clean theirs.

Council Member Dolores Varichak said if she had an emergency sewer backup, she wouldn’t call the city first. She said she’d call a sewer contractor to get the problem taken care of.