Residents at the Riverwalk Apartments in Salem have been dealing with a wide array of sewage issues.
Such issues include sewage leaks, black mold, flooding, unstable constructs and even feces.
Problems were first reported by tenants in February when rain caused flooding issues across the buildings.
Whenever a toilet is flushed or water is used, it goes straight to the bottom of the building
“It’s become so much of a hazard that it’s gotten to the point where you have two tubs of feces,” Shaniece King said. “It’s all in the bottom part of the floor. There’s no insulation. Everything that we do on the second floor goes down to the first floor.”
Tenants like Marissa Hawkins say that property staff and maintenance haven’t done nearly enough to solve the problem.
“They did have plumbers come in and scrape it up last night,” Hawkins said. “The plumbers just threw it in the backyard.”
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King says that she is the one who made the initial call to the health inspector with the City of Salem to come and investigate the problem.
When the health inspector came to assess the building, he detected a strong smell of sewage coming from the bottom floor of a building. When a plumber was called to investigate the sewage, they attempted to reach a pipe that was nine feet down. An attempt to reach the pipe resulted in a large amount of sewage leaking into the ground outside.
After this, the health inspector would wait for a structural engineer to show up to help properly assess the sewage while suggesting that those who lived in the building be moved elsewhere.
“We’ve had to shut the water off to the building so that no further water goes under the building,” City of Salem Codes Compliance Investigator Scott Martin said. “So once we shut the water off to the building, we recommended that they all need to be rehoused for that side of the building because we had to shut the water off.”
Property staff have set up some residents in hotels and have also tried to relocate families into adjacent buildings. Tenants, however, say that those apartment buildings are littered with trash and broken walls.
10 News reached out to The Riveralk at Salem for comment but have not yet received a message back.
