Signs Your Sewer and Wastewater System Needs Attention
Most sewer and wastewater emergencies don't always start as emergencies. They may start as small warnings that people ignore until something fails catastrophically.
Call us immediately if you notice any of the following:
- A sewer alarm is going off, even just once
- Sewage is backing up into drains or running outside
- Pumps running constantly or not running at all
- Unexplained alarms from your control panel or float system
- Wet spots, odors, or standing water near your system
Doug Picatti puts it plainly: "Pick up the phone and call us right away. Most people wait. They think, 'Oh, it's not a big deal, it went away.' No. You call us right away. You let us go down and take a look. We can quickly figure out if it's a real problem or just an anomaly. Call us before it becomes a crisis, because it's most likely going to get really messy and expensive if you wait."
A hiccup in your system is your system telling you something.
Don't wait until it's a disaster.
Sewer and Wastewater Services We Provide
Lift Station Repair and Maintenance
Not every property sits at the right elevation for gravity to handle sewer and wastewater flow to the city main.
When it doesn't, a lift station fills that gap - collecting wastewater in a sealed underground tank and pumping it up into the municipal system. Properly maintained, they operate invisibly. Neglected, the consequences are hard to ignore.
A real example: A fruit company finished construction on their new facility, extended their sewer line out of the buidling, and discovered their plant discharge piping was three feet below the city sewer main. There was no gravity option. The only solution was a full lift station to pump waste up to the municipal connection, and they needed it NOW.
This is not an unusual situation, and it's exactly the kind of problem Picatti Brothers has been solving for decades.
Lift stations are complex systems. They involve electrical components and controls, plumbing systems, control floats, and mechanical pumps. Any of them can fail. The most common reasons we get called out include:
- Plugged pumps and systems: the most frequent culprit behind a sewer alarm
- Broken plumbing: cracked or failed lines, damaged fittings, and valves and pipes leading to or from the station
- Control system and float failures: floats break, controls malfunction, and when they do, the whole system stops working
- System design or installation problems: We see this more times that you might think - new installations don’t work as promised because it was not designed or installed properly. We help determine why and fix these problems.
When it comes to sewer and wastewater systems, most contractors are limited to one trade. A plumber handles the plumbing. An electrician handles the electrical components.
What separates Picatti Brothers from most contractors: we are pump experts, have electricians on staff, and electrical engineers. When we show up, we diagnose the system operation and can repair the mechanical and electrical systems quickly, often in a single visit.
When the system is down, and waste is backing up, that's not an inconvenience - that is a 911 emergency. Our ability to understand the design criteria vs. the installed system and create a complete system that works for you properly is why so many people trust us for their systems.
One more thing worth knowing; Picatti Brothers handles system design, new systems, service, repair, and replacement on existing systems. If you're not sure which category your project falls into, just call us and we'll tell you straight.
Pressurized (Pump-to-Drain) Systems
We handle a substantial volume of work on residential and small-commercial pressurized sewer and wastewater systems (sometimes called pump-to-drain or pressure-dosing systems).
These are common throughout the Central Washington and surrounding communities, and we handle everything from routine repairs to emergency pump replacements. We partner with several plumbing companies, septic companies, and more, and are frequently referred for pumping problems due to our unique capabilities.
We are often asked to work throughout the state, and we are happy to do so as needed. We always keep our customers' budgets in mind, and we'll point you to another vendor if that's genuinely the better call for your situation.
Residential Sewer Repairs
For homeowners dealing with a sewer and wastewater emergency, we assess and repair in a single visit whenever possible. When something is wrong, and you're living with it, we don't want you waiting for a repair.
Commercial and Mobile Home Park Systems
We work with mobile home parks and commercial properties throughout the region. These sewer and wastewater systems often require more coordination, but our team has the experience to manage multi-unit and multi-system properties and work with maintenance managers, board members, ownership groups and more to get the job done right.
Municipal Lift Station Service
For cities and public works departments managing sewer and wastewater infrastructure, the process looks a little different. We come out, identify the problem, and provide a full assessment and recommendation.
Most municipal clients need to go through an approval and funding process before work begins. We understand that, and we work within it. Once you're ready, we schedule and execute as fast as possible.
Sump Pump Service and Repair
If you have a sump pump in your basement, we can help. Sump pumps are common residential calls we handle, and the stakes are real: a failed sump pump means a flooded basement. We repair, replace, and install sump pumps and can work with potable, storm, gray, and black water applications.
We regularly work with trusted brands including Hydromatic, Little Giant, Zoeller, Liberty Pumps, Orenco, Goulds, Barnes, and PROFLO.
Note: We do not offer septic tank pumping services. If that's what you need, we'll point you in the right direction.
Sewage Pump Repair and Sales
We offer repair of sewage pumps and motors in our service shop. If it cannot be fixed economically or if you need a spare, we also have access to most new sewer pumps and motors.
Sewage System Design and Engineering
For new applications or system upgrades, we offer sewage system design and engineering services.
Whether you need help selecting and installing the right sewage pump for a new build or improving the performance of an existing system, we can arrange a consultation and walk you through your options.
Insurance Claims and Disaster Recovery
When things go wrong and the damage can be significant, Picatti Brothers has the experience to support insurance claims and disaster recovery situations. We've worked with municipal clients on exactly this kind of scenario. We understand the documentation, the urgency, and the process.
A School Case Study: A Problem No One Else Could Solve
Some problems take more than a quick fix. They take patience, ingenuity, and the willingness to keep going long after most contractors would have walked away.
When a municipal sewer and wastewater system fails, the consequences are visible and immediate. Sewage doesn’t stop flowing just because your system fails. Raw sewage running down streets is not something any community wants, and Picatti Brothers is often the first call to prevent it or stop it from flowing.
As Doug puts it, "If you are a wastewater department and raw sewage is running down the streets, that's a serious problem. Nobody at a city organization ever wants this problem, and we are often their first call to prevent this from happening once a system problem occurs.”
That's the reality of this work. When it's bad, it's bad. And the people who can fix it fast, matter.
A few years ago, Picatti Brothers was called to help a school district to address a persistent lift station alarm. On the surface, it seemed like a straightforward issue. It wasn't. Over the course of more than a year, the team worked through every possible cause: the control system, the electrical equipment, the pump, the plumbing.
They replaced components. They called the manufacturer.They changed system parameters and programming. They repaired multiple problems. Each time they resolved one problem, a new alarm would appear. It was multiple problems compounding one another to create a problem that was complicated and difficult to solve.
The situation was causing real reputational pressure. The alarm would go off on weekends. Neighbors complained. The school district was right to consider whether Picatti Brothers could solve the problem.
Picatti didn't stop.
After ruling out every standard explanation, the Picatti team noticed something they had never seen before: instead of the lift station pumping water out to the city sewer, the city line was occasionally creating suction and pulling water back into the city main. It was an obscure, unusual circumstance. It was something not encountered before and to our knowledge, never captured in person.
To capture this for others to see, Picatti Brothers developed a system to place a camera inside the lift station and monitor it continuously. That process took six months to engineer and refine. Finally, they captured the event on video, sent the footage to the client and the city, and identified the exact cause.
"We went from having our reputation questioned to being a near superhero. No one could believe what they saw. We went through every possible scenario. We called multiple experts, including over a dozen calls to factory engineers, and still had no answer. It's something that should not happen, but it did. We stuck with it for well over a year, taking multiple 6am trouble calls, making visits to the site even on weekends, changing components, talking to experts, all at our expense, to fix it. In the end, we wanted to identify this problem for our customer and reward them for their confidence in us."
- Doug Picatti, President, Picatti Brothers
Repair solutions have been identified. The cause has been fully documented. And Picatti Brothers earned another customer who will trust them for years.
This is what wastewater expertise actually looks like.
Serving Yakima and the Surrounding Valley
Picatti Brothers is based in Yakima, WA and serves residential and commercial clients throughout the Yakima Valley and surrounding communities.
Our sewer and wastewater services extend to areas including Selah, Union Gap, Terrace Heights, Moxee, Wapato, Sunnyside, Prosser, Grandview, Bickleton, Tieton, Naches, Ellensburg, Cle Elum, Roslyn, Quincy, Wenatchee and more.
The Yakima region presents its own set of conditions that affect wastewater systems:
- aging infrastructure in established neighborhoods,
- pressurized systems in rural properties,
- irrigation-adjacent systems in agricultural areas, and
- high-demand municipal systems in growing communities.
We understand how those conditions affect the equipment, and we factor them into every service call.
The Legal Risk No One Talks About
Most people don't think about wastewater liability until it's too late.
But for anyone responsible for a community sewer and wastewater system, the legal exposure from a discharge violation is real, specific, and personal - not just an operational headache.
Under Washington's Water Pollution Control Act (RCW 90.48), a willful discharge violation isn't a slap on the wrist. It's classified as a gross misdemeanor - punishable by fines and up to one year in jail. And the law doesn't just go after the organization. It can reach the individuals responsible for the decision-making: leadership, board members, property managers, and anyone who knew about the risk and didn't act.
On top of the criminal exposure, civil penalties stack fast. Fines can run into the tens of thousands of dollars, and in some Washington enforcement cases, penalties have topped $250,000 for a single violation. Lawmakers are currently considering legislation (SB 5360) that would raise the stakes even further, potentially turning the worst violations into felonies with real prison time rather than a year in county jail.
This isn't theoretical. Picatti Brothers has seen mobile home parks in the Yakima area posted with county warning signs for exactly this kind of violation - a visible, public record that a system failed and someone didn't catch it in time.
Doug Picatti is direct about it: "I hope leadership of community organizations, HOAs, cities, and more understand the importance of managing these systems responsibly. All these systems ultimately fail, and leadership is responsible for preventing this from happening where they can and if they fail, get them back online quickly, safely, and provide years of trouble-free service."
The reason Picatti Brothers moves fast on municipal calls and frames wastewater problems in plain, urgent terms is intentional.
As Doug puts it: "We help them understand the problem and the solution quickly so they approve the repair quickly without having to spend valuable time thinking about it, having meetings, or waiting on a meeting to take a vote."
If you manage a mobile home park, a commercial property with a shared system, or a municipal utility, the risk of waiting isn't abstract. It's a fine with your organization's name on it, a warning sign posted where your residents and neighbors can see it, and potentially a criminal record with your name on it. Call before it becomes a violation - not after.
Who We Serve
Our sewer and wastewater services are available to:
- Residential homeowners with pressurized systems, pump failures, sump pump issues, or drain field pump problems
- Mobile home park operators managing shared systems across multiple units
- Commercial property managers and building owners dealing with sewer failures or ongoing system maintenance
- Agricultural operations with wastewater or effluent management needs
- Medical facilities requiring reliable, compliant sewer and wastewater system support
- Public works directors and municipal utilities managing lift stations, discharge compliance, and municipal sewer infrastructure
If you're not sure whether your system falls under our scope of work, just call. We'll tell you quickly.
How We Work: Residential vs. Municipal
One thing worth understanding upfront: the process looks a little different depending on who you are.
For residential customers: We send a technician to assess and repair. In most cases, we identify the problem and fix it in the same visit. You'll be billed for the service call. It's straightforward.
For municipal and industrial clients: Upon arrival, we assess the system and provide a full recommendation and estimate. These projects often require budget approval or a purchase order, so we provide the documentation you need to get authorization quickly. Once approved, we procure the parts needed and schedule the repair as quickly as possible. Almost without exception, once we identify what needs to be done, clients move forward.
In both cases, we prioritize quickly. A compromised sewer and wastewater system is a public health risk. We don't let those calls sit.
Frequently Asked Questions About Sewer and Wastewater Services
We're available 24/7/365 and will answer your call immediately.
Physical response time depends on factors such as crew availability and distance, but we prioritize calls involving active overflow or public health risk. Call us, and we'll tell you exactly where things stand.