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Days before the Des Moines River spilled into the north side of the city, while we all tracked the rise at Saylorville Lake and downtown workers wondered about downtown levees, one of our colleagues was dealing with the nightmare of backed-up sewage in a South Side basement.

Such stories are told every time we go through an unusually rainy season, not just when a major flood is shaping up. This suggests that it’s time to emphasize the unglamorous work of maintaining the city. The downtown is looking great, we’re getting more and more approval at the national level and the leaders of Central Iowa are wonderfully generous when asked to donate to worthy causes.

We’ve got the curb appeal now. But what’s going on in the basement?

A city can’t be said to treat all of its residents equally unless they all get the same flood protection. And no matter how stylish and shiny it might be, a city can’t be truly first-class unless all of the sewers work.

To get improvements made to the levee system, the city has to deal with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But the 815-mile sanitary sewer system is Des Moines’ problem, and the city’s 2007 performance report shows just 61 percent of survey respondents “satisfied” with its sanitary sewers.

From the 2007-2008 fiscal year through 2012-2013, the city plans to spend $33.9 million on sanitary sewer improvements, or $5.6 million per year. The “city-wide” project, budgeted at $2.3 million over a six-year period, “should reduce sanitary sewer backups and emergency maintenance costs,” according to the city’s Web site.

However, most of the projects add new sewer lines to the system rather than updating what we have. The ones that lead to new development also will bring in new revenues as users connect to it, but maintenance costs rise as the system expands.

It’s a never-ending and expensive job, and we don’t get to see the results as we drive around, but it has to remain a top priority.