Relief has come at last to the residents of Weldon Park subdivision in Mandeville thanks to the extensive repairs completed on their outdated sewer system.

The subdivision, located in western Mandeville next to Mandeville High School, is one of the oldest in the city, Mayor Eddie Price said, which means it has some of the oldest piping systems in the city.

Of late, the pipelines began crumbling and clogging, leaving residents to cope with a defunct sewerage system with some lines backing up into homes. But those problems have all been repaired, Public Works Director David deGeneres said, thanks to a revolutionary process called Insituform.

Insituform, from the Latin phrase “in situ form” meaning to form in place, is a process used to repair aging sewer and water pipes using a special substance that coats the inside of the pipe and cures in place leaving an impermeable barrier between the pipe and substance flowing through the pipe.

“They may have used it a couple of times before, but this is the first they’ve used Insituform since I’ve been here,” deGeneres said.

The city decided to use the Insituform process, Price said, instead of starting from scratch and installing new piping because of the cost and also because of the inaccessibility of the pipelines in the neighborhood. When the subdivision was first created decades ago, the pipelines were laid behind the homes instead of in front which is more common practice today. This generated a dilemma when the city decided to repair the lines. They settled on the Insituform at a cost of $800,000 rather than redoing the neighborhood’s sewer system, which deGeneres said probably would have cost more than $3 million.

So far, the newly restored pipeline seems to be holding up but deGeneres said time will the determining factor.