Sewage coming up a drain is two jobs. Someone has to find where the line is blocked. Someone has to clean up what came into the house. In Burien those are usually two different calls, and the order matters.
Call (206) 813-0805 for the cleanupYour plumbing. Toilets, tubs, showers, floor drains, and the pipes under the floor.
The pipe from your house out to the district's line. It's private — yours to repair. Valley View Sewer District requires a district permit for side sewer repair, and asks owners not to sign a contract to have the line dug up without talking to the district first. Valley View also offers financing for private side sewer work.
The public sewer. Exactly where your pipe ends and theirs begins is the district's call — which is why they look first.
Southwest Suburban Sewer District — (206) 244-9575
Valley View Sewer District — (206) 242-3236 · after hours (206) 501-8158
Midway Sewer District — (206) 824-4960
Not sure which serves you? The City of Burien's utilities page has a sewer district map.
Wherever the blockage turns out to be, the cleanup inside the house is the same job.
The City of Burien doesn't run sewer service. Three special districts do, and they don't all publish the same instructions. Valley View Sewer District's are the clearest:
Call the district first, any time of day or night. A district employee works out whether the blockage is in the district's system or in your plumbing or side sewer. Valley View says homeowners have paid contractors to clear blockages that turned out to be in the district's own pipes. If a contractor has already cleared a blockage that was in the district's system, the contractor contacts the district directly about payment.
Southwest Suburban and Midway have their own procedures. Ask them the same question when you call: is it your line or mine?
Stop using water everywhere in the house. Every drain feeds the same line out, so a load of washing upstairs can come up through the basement shower. Hold off on flushing, running taps, the dishwasher and the washing machine.
Keep people and pets away from the water, and shut the door on the room if you can. Don't try to mop it into another drain. If it's reached anything electrical — outlets, a furnace, a water heater — stay out of that room entirely.
Photograph everything before anything is moved. Sewer backup cover is often a separate add-on to a home policy, and the photos matter either way.
Some Burien homes were on private septic rather than public sewer well into the 2020s. In Boulevard Park, Valley View's filings for its sewer extension described septic systems past their 50-year life, failing every year when stormwater ponded over the drain fields. The district has been extending public sewer to replace them.
If your house is on septic and it's backing up, the sewer district isn't the call — a septic service deals with the tank. What came into the house is still a Category 3 cleanup.
Sewage is Category 3 water — it carries bacteria and viruses, and it's handled as a health hazard, not a mess.
The affected area gets contained so it doesn't spread through the house. Anything porous the water touched — carpet and pad, drywall above the waterline, insulation, often baseboards — comes out and is disposed of. What stays gets cleaned and disinfected. Then it's dried, with moisture readings taken until the structure is back to normal, which takes days. Rebuilding comes after, not before.
If it came up in a lower floor or went under the house, the crawl space or basement needs the same treatment as the rooms above it.
Probably something past the individual drains — in the side sewer or the district's line. When more than one fixture backs up at once, the problem is usually downstream of all of them. Stop using water and call your sewer district; they'll check whether it's their side.
Not until the blockage is cleared. Every drain in the house empties into the same line, so water run anywhere can come up at the lowest opening — often a shower or floor drain. Using the other bathroom usually makes the backup worse.
A small, contained overflow from a toilet is one thing. Sewage across a floor is another: it soaks into porous materials, and those usually have to come out, not be wiped down. Without protective equipment and the right disinfectants, it's a health risk, and anything left wet grows mold within days.
The line from the house to the tank is private, so it's a plumber or septic contractor for the pipe, not the sewer district. If it's been leaking under the floor, the crawl space needs cleaning and drying too — sewage under a house doesn't dry out on its own.
The cleanup's the same either way. Call (206) 813-0805 — answered any hour.