Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/277189
up," Garland told Topovski. Turning to com- pany staffers, Garland said, "Let's get Steve the internal schedule, and we'll keep you in the loop." The reason for Topovski's irritation began to emerge as the session continued. Public meetings on the project have been tak- ing place to instill confidence in the public that the city, engineers and contractors know what they are doing. But to understand what follows, a little Plumbing 101 is required. SURCHARGE AND THE WET WELL Plumbing rule No. 1: Water flows downhill. Gravity alone has the power to move water. Sewer systems use "gravity flow" to send their cargo to a low collection point called a "wet well." As pipes connect thousands of homes in south Sarasota, they go deeper and deeper until they empty into a concrete vault at Luke Wood Park, a stone's throw from the conflu- ence of U.S. 41 and U.S. 301. But as the wet well fills up, and the inlet pipe is submerged, what happens then? It is a con- dition called "surcharge." And any Florida sewer system has to cope with it, because this state gets hurricanes. Old pipes leak, and while all of Sarasota's earliest pipes, from a century ago, have been replaced, some of the remaining ones are not that modern; they are still leaking stormwater into the sewer system. If everybody flushed his or her toilet at the same time, the result still would not be as dras- tic as what happens during a hurricane. The latter situation was the topic of the Tuesday, Pipes are shown in an ALCOSAN wet well. Image by 90.5 WESA via Wikimedia Commons Sarasota News Leader March 14, 2014 Page 47