About 15 property owners on Warriors Road in Green Tree are waiting for what one called a connection to the 21st century.

Kim Boyd said delays surrounding the installation of a sewer line have complicated efforts to sell her late father's house. Phil Aley said the new line would make it easier for older couples on the street to sell their homes and downsize. Emily Schwartz said she and her family can't get a mortgage to buy the house on Warriors Road that they're now renting.

While most of Green Tree is tied into a public sewer system, Warriors Road homes either have septic tanks or drain sewage into an old coal mine.

Borough Manager W. David Montz said officials are working to bring residents onto the public sewer system as soon as possible, but he acknowledged that process is taking longer than expected. "I think they understand that we are trying," he said.

Warriors Road is a window onto the region's myriad problems with sewage and stormwater -- problems that Allegheny County Sanitary Authority and scores of municipalities, including Green Tree, are under orders to fix. The region's water problems have received more scrutiny since an Aug. 19 flash flood in the Highland Park section of Pittsburgh killed four people.

Ms. Boyd's father died in 2008, leaving a house that she believes has a sewerage connection to a mine. When she contacted a real estate agent to sell the home, she said; the agent told her, "You're not going to be able to do it."

Ms. Boyd tried to sell without an agent but had no luck. For now, she's renting the house and driving from her own home in Zelienople to take care of the property.

"We have to make a 60-mile round trip whenever we had to go down and do something at the house," she said.

While Ms. Boyd maintains that her father's house and some others on the street connect to a mine, Mr. Montz said he believes that they have on-lot septic systems.