With coffee cup in hand, Dan Oldham calmly watched a thick stream of white smoke rising from a pipe on the roof of his Folsom home Tuesday morning – a sight that normally would have sent him hurrying to call the Fire Department.

Oldham had been warned by the city of Folsom that his house would be included in a program that uses smoke to test the soundness of the sewers. The smoke testing reveals where cracks exist in sewer lines, or where a homeowner has illegally hooked up gutters into the sewer system.

“When people take their downspouts and connect those directly to the sewer, rainwater goes directly to the sewer, and we don’t want that,” said Todd Eising, environmental and water resources manager with the city of Folsom.

Stormwater flowing into the sewer system eats up valuable capacity and can potentially lead to raw sewage spills. It also costs money to treat and convey that extra water.

The smoke testing is simple. Workers open a manhole and attach a lawnmower-sized engine. It powers a fan that blows vaporized water into the sewer system. The water is harmless, more condensation than smoke.

The most noxious part of the process stays at the street, in the form of the smoke that sputters out of the engine at the manhole cover.

In order not to alarm residents, the city alerted homeowners two weeks prior to testing, said Eising.

Some of the homeowners spilled into the street Tuesday to watch smoke trail out of their pipes. “I’m glad they’re doing it,” said Oldham. “I just don’t want any smoke inside my house.”

It takes less than half a minute for the smoke to travel underground from the manhole cover and emerge from a home’s vent pipe. The vents, located on roofs, are part of standard home design. They work with the sewage system to make sure changes in water pressure in the house don’t suck in sewer gases or smells, Eising said.

Smoke rarely enters the home, unless there is a leak – or the homeowner has tied into the system illegally.

Folsom’s sewage collection system consists of more than 267 miles of sewer pipe and nine pump stations. The smoke testing costs the city between $2,000 and $2,500 for each mile of pipe.

The entire system was smoke-tested between 2002 and 2006, said Eising. This year, the city is testing in phases. It’s the kind of testing that feels like it never ends, he said. Once all the 17 basins have been tested, it’s not long until the city needs to start testing again.

Smoke testing also has been employed by such cities as Berkeley and Santa Rosa.

Eising said the testing is part of Folsom’s commitment to water quality – an issue that dogged the city in the past. Between 1995 and 2000, the city had several overflows of raw sewage into the American River and the Folsom South Canal.

The largest overflow occurred in 2000, when the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board fined the city $700,000 after a spill sent 700,000 gallons of sewage into the American River.

Nonprofit leaders concerned about the decline of the American River Parkway and other Sacramento County amenities made a pitch Wednesday for a portion of $4 million in hotel tax revenue.

In the past seven years, the county’s “transient occupancy tax,” a 12 percent fee on hotel rooms, has declined from almost $7 million to just under $4 million. The recession reduced other county funds, which led county supervisors to tap the hotel tax for services once funded by other means.

Some supervisors would like to see a dedicated amount of the hotel tax revenue set aside for specific uses, such as civic amenities and economic development. The board held a workshop Wednesday to discuss funding possibilities but could not agree on how much should be dedicated for specific uses.

Most organizations seeking funding Wednesday are connected to the American River Parkway or advocate for its improvement. They also emphasized the need to improve existing county resources, instead of spending money on developing new amenities.

Specifically, the Save the American River Association and other groups criticized the county for dedicating $100,000 a year for the Powerhouse Science Center. The county plans to pay that amount over 20 years for the museum planned for Sacramento’s riverfront.

SARA representatives want the county to spend more money maintaining the parkway, “the crown jewel of Sacramento.” While the organization did not submit a spending proposal, representatives said it was a good use of hotel tax revenue.

Two nonprofits running county property also asked for assistance. Shawn Harrison, founder and co-director of Soil Born Farms, said the organization needs help maintaining the American River Ranch. The urban farming organization is based on the historic 55-acre ranch owned by the county and located on the parkway in Rancho Cordova.

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Reservoirs in Northern California are expected to rise as much as 10 percent during a wet and powerful storm that began impacting the state Thursday, state officials said.

As dark clouds rolled over Lake Oroville, people pulling their boats from the water said they were hopeful about the storm’s effect on the reservoir.

“If it comes up a little more, that would be great. It would be great. It would be great,” said Salley Rainey, of Yuba City. “We need more rain.”

Officials at the California Department of Water Resources said unfortunately, the storm is expected to be quite warm and will drop more rain than snow.

However, it is hitting a region where the state is most equipped to capture the runoff.

“On the positive side, we’re receiving rain at our biggest reservoir in the state,” said Boone Lek, a state hydrologist. “That’s Lake Shasta.”

Lek said Shasta is expected to rise from 44 percent to 53 percent of capacity.

He said Lake Oroville will rise from 41 percent to 48 percent full and Folsom Lake from 46 percent to 53 percent full.

“We’ll take what we can,” Lek said. “We went through such a dry January. This is going to be a good start to the month of February.”

However, people in the Butte County town of Palermo said they are worried the storm could be a repeat of one they saw in December.

Heavy rain caused a creek to spill over its banks and flooded the town center, including a post office and a convenience store.

“It was fast,” resident Shari Atkison said. “I was here (at the store) and then I went up to the fire station. And some guys helped me load some (sand)bags and came back. And it was over my boots.”

At the post office, sandbags are still piled near the front door.

More at KCRA.com >>>