Controversy over sewage that shut down Idaho restaurant

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If you’re looking to open a restaurant at some point in your career, then you’re going to have to deal with a fair amount of hurdles. You’ll need to earn the proper culinary certificates, determine what sort of concept you’d like to move forward with, find an appropriate space and staff and even more. Occasionally though, you may get blindsided by something completely unexpected. That seems to be the case for one Idaho restaurant, the Tall Pine Drive-In, which CBS affiliate KREM 2 reports recently had to close due to a massive raw sewage leak.

The leak
Gannett affiliate NWCN has reported that the leak in question took place in November 2014. Early that month, local workers from the sewage department were completing maintenance on a nearby pipe line. While the work in question was routine, the individuals assigned to the project accidentally blocked off the Tall Pine Drive-In’s sewage line. Inevitably, this blockage caused a back up and a pressure build. Ultimately, it resulted in waste backtracking through the pipes to the restaurant and coming up out of all of the drains. In speaking with NWCN, manager Teresa Banks explained that there was simply nothing they could do at that point to prevent the immense amount of damage that occurred:

“It [raw sewage] was coming up out of the drains faster than we could mop it,” Banks explained.

Damages
Apparently, Banks and the other management at the Tall Pine Drive-In have already had to shell out roughly $30,000 out of pocket to account for the damage done to their establishment. That said, they feel as though they shouldn’t be responsible for the costs stemming from the damage. In response to this, they’ve brought a lawsuit against both the sewage department of the city and the contractor that was brought on to perform the work on the pipeline. If the case goes to court and is found in favor of the restaurant proprietors, then the department and contractor could find themselves responsible for not only the damages to the restaurant but also the potential business that the Tall Pine Drive-In has lost in more than a month of being inoperable.