Cambria County homeowners sue over sewer testing mandates and costly repairs

WJAC by Baylee Wojcik

Mon, March 30, 2026 at 10:15 PM

A sweeping legal fight is unfolding in Cambria County as homeowners push back against sewer repair requirements they say have forced them to spend tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket.

A class action lawsuit has been filed against the Johnstown Redevelopment Authority, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and more than two dozen Cambria County municipalities. The case focuses on a decades-long effort to address sewage overflows in the Johnstown area.

According to the lawsuit, sewer line issues allowed rainwater and groundwater to enter the city’s sewer system, which led to overflows into local rivers in the past. Attorney Timothy Wojton said officials developed a plan centered on private sewer lines.

“They devised a plan that they would inspect or force the inspection of private homeowners sewer lines because it was their theory that the sewer lines were not properly maintaining or keeping in water,” Wojton said.

Wojton said the municipalities named in the lawsuit passed mandates and threatened fines, penalties and even water shutoffs if homeowners did not comply with testing. The lawsuit also includes a case involving a family that requested an exemption from testing because of a serious health condition, but the request was denied.

Wojton said the testing has cost thousands of local residents tens of thousands of dollars.

“These homeowners had to essentially do this from their own money with their own funds,” Wojton said.

He said many older pipes could not withstand water pressure testing and were damaged, causing homeowners to pay again for major repairs.

“The homeowners had to use their own money again to dig up their basements, dig up the concrete, dig up a trench throughout their front or back yards to replace the sewer line that was now damaged,” Wojton said.

The plaintiffs argue the overflow problem was not caused by private pipes, but by public infrastructure. The lawsuit includes a 2019 letter from Storm Water Control Services LLC stating there was no rational basis for requiring residents to test their pipes before exhausting other options.

“They've taken a public problem and hoisted it upon the backs of hardworking Cambria County residents and made them pay for it,” Wojton said.

The lawsuit claims there were alternatives that would not have placed the financial burden on homeowners. One option cited is expanding the JRA-owned Dornick Wastewater Treatment Plant to reduce overflow issues.

“The Quaker Sales Corporation which owned a large asphalt plant directly contiguous to the Dornick Point plant offered at least three times to swap land so that the redevelopment authority could expand the plant and add storage or holding capacity,” Wojton said. “The redevelopment authority from what we can gather from our research refused every offer, just refused it and instead shifted all the burden and cost onto individual homeowners. We find that to be arbitrary.”