BRIDGETON, Mo. – Metro Shooting Supply, a Bridgeton gun shop, shooting range, and training facility, says it suffered $157,000 in damages and lost business because of a sewer backup caused by the Metropolitan Sewer District (MSD).
Owner Steven King said they can’t get the agency to pay.
“November 11 of last year, Metropolitan Sewer District backup into our basement, it flooded our complete range area and our service counter,” King said. “We had about 9 inches of human waste and water down there; it took several weeks to fix, and once we got it fixed, MSD refused to pay for it in full.”
MSD has only offered $72,000, claiming that the company has not provided enough documentation to justify any additional funds.
“MSD, our number one priority is to serve our customers fairly and accurately,” said Bess McCoy, a spokesperson for MSD. “We’ve been working with this customer to help with the claim, and so far what we’ve offered them is coverage for the damages as well as the clean-up costs. We understand that this is a business and that they also had some loss of revenue, we’ve asked them for some documentation around that, so we can also compensate him for that.”
King said he has lost $70,000 in business. Actual construction costs of $77,000, plus $9,000 for display case replacement.
“It’s putting people in financial strain when it has no fault of their own,” he said. “I think they’re taking advantage of certain communities by not taking care of their issues.”
The sewer backups happened last year. McCoy explained what went wrong.
“Yes, this is the fault of having old infrastructure, and so we do take responsibility in making sure our customer is fairly compensated in that instance,” she said.
Right now, it appears that MSD is looking for more documents, and King has stated that he has given the agency everything he has. Currently, there’s about $80,000 between what he wants and what MSD is willing to pay for an incident that MSD admits was its fault.