Our big news: sewers!

People here on the outskirts of the village where we live are now getting sewers for the first time. Hey, it's a big deal after two or three thousand years of living without. Don't you agree?

In April 2004 the village put in le tout-à-l'égout — French for sewer lines — along our road down the hill from us to serve the 12 or 15 houses down there. We and our neighbors in the eight houses on the upper stretch of the road were left sewerless. The mayor promised us that the sewer lines would be put in chez nous in 2005, and we started waiting and waiting started in April a year ago for something to happen. Despite the promises, there was no sign of construction work as 2005 drew to a close.

19 April 2006 at La Renaudière

Well, the work finally started about 10 days ago. They have now laid the pipe along the 300 or 400 yards of road that go through the woods on the way up to our hameau (hamlet, or settlement). And today they are digging next to our house, along the road just outside our hedge. It's a mess, and it's inconvenient since we have a lot of visitors and guests right now. They will be digging up our little driveway in just a few minutes. But we can put up with it. Being hooked up to the sewers will significantly improve our lives.

Getting ready to dig up our driveway

Some of our neighbors have had septic systems for years, and they are not all happy about having to pay a contractor to come connect them to the new sewer lines. Others, us included, don't have septic systems. When we bought our house three years ago, we thought we did. But it turned out that what we had was a two-part system for disposing of waste water.

There goes the driveway!

Our gray water — drainage from kitchen and bathroom sinks, the shower, washing machine, dishwasher and all — runs, along with rainwater collected by the roof gutters, down a long pipe buried under the gravel path that runs the length of our back yard. The eaux usées empty onto the ground on the edge of what passes for a dirt road along the back of our property. That system has worked pretty well for us these past three years. Only once did it get stopped up, and we had to have it unplugged by a company that blasted it out with a high-pressure water jet.

A nice picture of flowers to dress up a smelly topic

The waste from our WC goes into a sealed, underground holding tank that holds about 750 gallons (3000 liters). The tank fills up a little more every time somebody flushes the toilet. At the beginning, it would be full after two months. Then once, when we had heavy rains, it was full after one month. We realized rainwater was getting in. We didn't need to be paying to have rainwater pumped out and hauled away. We covered the whole area with a tarp, and then we found the tank filled up less quickly — every three or even four months.

When the tank is full, we have to call a company that specializes in pumping such tanks out and transporting the waste to a treatment plant. It costs us about $200 (175 euros) each time. That's bad enough. But the worst part is that there is no gauge on the tank. To see how full it is, you have to go poke a long stick into the tank and see how much room is left in there. As one woman working at the village hall said when I told her about our tank, "Ce n'est pas une solution très élégante" to the sewage problem.

Our neighbor Jean-Michel in his new Peugeot 407 trying to get past
the dumptruck, the tractors, and the workers in their bleus de travail

Today we feel like we are jumping feet-first into the 20th century. Hey, does that mean Bush isn't president yet? Maybe it's not too late to prevent that catastrophe.