Department of Public Services | 55 Portland Street | Portland, Maine 04101 | (207)-874-8801
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dps news

No Trash Pickup on Labor Day, Monday, September 1, 2008  (8/19/2008)
The Department of Public Services Trash and Recycling crews will not be collecting trash or recycling in the City of Portland on Labor Day, Monday, September 1, 2008. Residents who normally place their material out for collection on Monday should instead place it out on Saturday, August 30, 2008. More

Reminder!! Street Cleaning Operations Underway  (7/3/2008)
Residents of the Peninsula are reminded to observe parking restrictions in effect for street cleaning. Fail to do so could result in the towing of your vehicle. More

Want to Receive Important Construction Announcements from the City of Portland?  (2/27/2008)
Interested in finding out about major construction projects in the City of Portland before you find yourself in a long line of traffic? E-mail us to be added to the subscriber list More

Find Your Trash and Recycling Day  (2/23/2007)
Have a question on when your trash or recycling is picked up? More

Streets & Utilities

Waste Water Maintenance

Sewer Division | Sewer Inspections | System Administration

Sewer Division
The City of Portland’s Sewer Division is operated by the Public Services department. Two different divisions work as one to manage the sewer system. The Engineering Engineering Division of The Public Services department has within it an Environmental section that is responsible for managing large sewer programs.

The Environmental section handles programs like the Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) program. This type of sewer system makes up more than half of the city's sewer system.

The CSO program was created to separate storm water from the sanitary sewer system. Storm water has a major impact on the sewer system as well as the public waters around our community.

Other responsibilities of the Environmental Section is to inspect the city's sewer and storm water lines through the use of sophisticated video equipment.

These are two examples of what this highly trained group of people do everyday.

The Public Services Department Sewer Division currently manages 200 plus miles of sewer lines and 100 plus miles of storm water lines. The Sewer Division has 4,400 catch basin as well as several thousands sewer and storm water manholes. The division also maintains the City’s road side ditches, culverts and sewers, and storm water lines located on the right of way.

The Sewer Division is charged with managing the following programs.

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System Administration
This aspect of the operation involves the management of a large amount of information. Some information records in our system go back to the late 1800’s.

Our sewer inspectors are responsible for maintaining sewer and storm water connection cards. These cards assist the public, contractors, and our inspectors in locating underground lines.

The Sewer Section records the daily maintenance records of sewerVactor Truck and storm sewer cleaning assignments. One or the major components for managing storm water is through an aggressive catch basin cleaning program. One of our newest tools is our Vactor truck. This truck carries 1,500 gallons of water for use with its frontend mounted jet cleaning attachment.

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Sewer Inspections
We have three full time sewer inspector who respond to sewer related emergencies, sewer odor complaints sewer backups street flooding.

Other duties of our sewer inspectors is to respond to dig safes location marking request.

Structural repairs to catch basins and manhole. Our construction crew also performs emergency spot repairs to our underground sewer and storm water lines.

Any sewer operation questions, please call John Emerson at 874-8468. Any sewer engineering services section at 874-8846.

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