Homeowner says city knew about broken sewer line, waited months to fix, and didn’t tell residents

CHARLOTTE — A SouthPark homeowner says the city of Charlotte knew about a broken sewer line on her property and didn’t tell her or her neighbors about it then waited more than eight months to fix it.

Ilonka Aylward says the city was working on a storm drainage project and crews were hauling away lots of rock and soil. You may not think much of that, but the way she saw it, it’s her land, her property.

“They are worth a lot of money,” she said.

Plus, she was worried removing all the material would weaken the hill where her house sits. “Lots of soil. Lots and lots, truckloads of soil,” she said.

And Aylward happens to be a lawyer.

“So I filed a motion saying they’re taking out all my land, all my stuff, all my boulders, all my riprap,” she said.

Aylward says during the course of that case, city inspectors told her two things she wasn’t expecting. First, that the sewer line actually broke last summer. Second, the city didn’t plan to fix it until May of this year, more than eight months later.

“I don’t know if [the sewer crews] would have actually even noticed or even admitted that the sewer was broken,” she said.

It’s not clear if sewage actually leaked during those months. But Aylward says the city didn’t tell didn’t tell her or her neighbors about the break.

She’s even more frustrated because she says she had hired her own engineer before the project even started and that he had expressed concerns about the sewer line, saying the city’s design made “damage” more likely, not just to the line, but to Aylward’s “residence.”

“So, I’m not an engineer. I can’t say this happens because of that. I’m saying I had an engineer’s letter in 2019 that says here’s the danger and then in 2023, we see it materializing,” Aylward told Action 9′s Jason Stoogenke.

Aylward also claims the sewer line’s design meant crews had to break more rock than had they used a different design. Now, she wants the city to change the sewer line’s design. She also wants city leaders to increase oversight of stormwater crews.

The city told Stoogenke it doesn’t comment on pending litigation. He read its legal filings to get a sense of its side of the story. It denies most of the allegations which is common in cases like this.

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