This is not ok. Each year hundreds of thousands of gallons of sewage hit Oakland each year. This happens from aged pipes. Because of this, it contaminates creeks, lakes, and waterways that flow right into the Bay. People have been dealing with this for quite sometime due to damaged properties. What a headache right? Take a look at what this Pastor said via KTVU 2 Investigates.
OAKLAND, Calif. - Miracles of Faith Rev. Greggory L. Brown can’t forget one Thanksgiving weekend when it seemed as though biblical-sized floods had deluged his church. He had just finished serving a meal to his parishioners when he got an urgent phone call. Sewage was spewing into the bathroom and up to the countertops at his church, nestled in a residential Oakland neighborhood near the Laurel District. The air smelled like rotten eggs. Brown goo covered the floor. None of the children at the church-run Head Start program were allowed to come to school until crews dressed in hazmat uniforms hauled out the unsanitary mess. “Jesus wept,” Brown said remembering that winter nearly two years ago when 1,200 gallons of sewage spewed outside and inside his church, conjuring a verse from John 11:35. “Yeah, I wept too at what happened.”
Brown estimates he and his neighbors have spent $50,000 over 15 years to install a reverse drain outside the sidewalk of his church. And he’s spent thousands of dollars more to replace ruined furniture. Most times, Brown has to figure out how to put a Band-Aid on the problem himself. “There are times I go outside of the church and take Lysol and spray it around the sewer,” Brown said. “The neighbors used to laugh at me. I just go outside with two or three cans of Lysol and I would just spray and spray thinking how unfortunate it is that little children have to walk past this.”