National Clothesline

A drycleaner in Fayetteville, NC, is seeking financial compensation from the local Public Works Commission for a rusty water problem that he claims has affected his business for years.

According to Ikey Smith, owner of Smitty’s Cleaners, he has lost over $300,000.

PWC spokesperson Carolyn Justice-Hinson said that Smith hasn’t filed a formal claim against the agency yet. If he does seek $300,000, she said, it would be the “highest claim we’ve ever seen for this type of situation.”

Typically, most commercial claims against PWC are for damages between $1,000 to $10,000.

Smith believes that rusty water in his line lead to dirty steam problems, which resulted in much higher gas and equipment maintenance bills. He estimates it cost him $400 to $500 dollars a day in extra production costs and customer claims for a period of three to four years.

“It causes a rust-looking stain,” Smith explained. “I was re-running about 100 to 150 shirts a day. Some of that stuff wouldn’t come out. I was wondering where the profit was going while I’m back there all day spotting shirts with rust stains.”

Smith claims that PWC has known about the problem for years and unsuccessfully tried to fix it many times.

“I’d call them. They’d come out here. They said, ‘Well, we flushed out the fire hydrant. That’s all we can do. That’s all we know how to do.’ I come to find out about three years later that they were flushing down the wrong fire hydrant,” he said. “They were just blowing in the wrong water line and weren’t helping me at all.”

According to Justice-Hinson, PWC records indicate that they were first made aware of the problem by Smith in late 2002 and the agency invested $3,800 in December to change the line.

Justice-Hinson pointed out that Smitty’s did not have a water filtration system at the time; several other PWC commercial customers use them to provide extra treatment for their water.

She also noted how a company’s water usage quantity can affect its overall water quality: “More demand causes more reaction in the line.”

PWC considers Smitty’s to be one of its larger commercial business customers. The business uses over 150,000 gallons of water per month, Justice-Hinson said, adding that no other customers on the water line have reported any problems.

Smith, who recently installed a $6,000 water filtration system in his plant, has run the family-owned plant for over 20 years. His business employs 65 people who operate out of a 25,000 sq. ft. building that services all of the cleaning work from three satellite locations. Among the plant’s equipment are three double buck shirt units, five drycleaning machines, two boilers and six washing machines.

With the addition of the new filtration system and water line, Smith believes that 99% of the water problems have been resolved. Now, he is turning his attention to finding the best legal strategy for pursuing financial recompense.

“They are a ‘no-fault’ government agency so you can’t sue them,” he explained. “But this particular one in Fayetteville has a quarter of a million dollar bond. That’s what I’m going after. Even though this thing has cost me about $300,000 or $400,000, I just have to swallow the rest, if I get any at all.”