complained that I had interrupted a baseball game in which the Phillies were apparently determined to disappoint her. I described the conditional approval, the absent inspection record, and the unusually confident claims Meadowbrook had made about its sewage plant.
"You can ask the state to review the file," she said. "And you can submit a documented complaint if the public records suggest a compliance problem. But don't assume the plant is failing because a document is missing. They have to inspect it."
"What happens if they find a serious problem?"
"Corrective orders, monitoring, expensive upgrades, possibly temporary measures. It depends on the condition. People still need sanitation, Garrett. Nobody wants eighty-five families with toilets that don't work."
That answer was important. I was angry enough to enjoy the prospect of Darlene receiving an unpleasant government letter, but I didn't want sewage backing up in a child's bathroom because adults were fighting about a bridge. I asked Brianna for the appropriate public complaint process, and she sent it along with a warning to keep every assertion factual. I filled out the form with copies of the available permit history and left conclusions to the engineers whose job it was to inspect.
Before the state could respond, the township began sending me code citations. One concerned my father's old 1979 Ford pickup behind the barn. Another concerned a contained ash pile from clearing brush. A third measured the height of my private-property signs with an enthusiasm no one had ever shown toward