Montgomery County family's home flooded with neighborhood's sewage, water district denies responsibility
MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Texas - Since 2019, Osreca and Terrance Miller say they've been complaining to Montgomery County Water Control Improvement District #1.
"We've been complaining to them about the sewage backing up in our home over and over," Terrance said. "May 2nd, it got out of hand that morning, we woke up to two to three inches of urine feces in our home."
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"It was traumatizing to us and our children," said Osreca. "We had to come outside and see tampons in our front yard."
What happened to the Millers could have happened to any of their neighbors.
"We pretty much had to gut the whole house downstairs, pull up the floors, the walls, and do everything over," said Terrance.
Good furniture had to be tossed.
"We had to deplete our savings and our son's college fund," said Osreca. "Now we're stuck in a loan, trying to make payments."
"Nobody wants to acknowledge or take accountability for what happened," Terrance said.
The Millers say Waste Control Improvement District #1 has offered them nothing, not even an apology.
Major repair work was done on the line soon after the sewer tsunami inside the Millers home.
"First, they tried to put us on a payment plan to pay to look into their problem. When we refused, they finally sent someone out and they ran a camera through the main sewer line and it was severely damaged," said Terrance. "They had to replace the whole manhole. It had deteriorated."
In a letter from the Miller's insurance company, Montgomery County WCID #1 admits the cause was due to a county issue.
But in this letter to the Millers from the water district's insurance company, Montgomery County WCID #1 denies any wrongdoing and denies the claim in its entirety.
The Millers have attended two board meetings. We decided to tag along with the Millers for their third board meeting.
"I notified you all. Since 2019, nobody fixed the problem. Nobody acknowledged it until it blew up, and now you're turning a blind eye to it," Terrance told the board.
The board told the couple they would discuss during executive session and that was it.
"Who do you think is responsible for this?" Osreca asked the board members. "We didn't do anything. We just woke up to tampons floating, poop in our house, and it's like you all are ignoring us. Who is responsible if it was your house, who is responsible?"