SANFORD, Fla. -- Sewer pipes under the city of Sanford are so old they're starting to fall apart and there's major concern what's flowing through the pipes could be seeping out.

However, the city found a way to fix the pipes from the inside. The antiquated sewer lines beneath Sanford have never before seen all the wiring and high-tech cameras now crawling their way through.

Most sewers are more than five-decades old without any updates. Resident Bobby Flowers can attest.

“Mine's never been touched. None at all,” Flowers said.

That's now changing for about 5,000 customers along 15 miles of sewer lines. This fall the city began using $2.6 million of stimulus loans to repair lines that have become so decayed, they're letting huge amounts of rainwater seep in and some raw sewage seep out.

“When you have sanitary wastewater that's discharging in the ground, it's also creating a safety hazard as well,” Cedric Coleman of the City of Sanford Utilities Department said.

Repairing the sewer lines doesn't mean digging them up. Contractors send a felt-like material through the sewer, almost like a shoelace going through the pipe. Then they expand it with air and solidify it with steam. By the end, they have a solid lining almost like a new pipe.

Crews then use a camera and a robot system to saw out openings off the main line for each home. The real savings, however, are at the waste water treatment plant. By keeping all that rain water out, the city will only pay to treat actual sewage.

“It costs the city a lot more for power to pump this water and treat it with chemicals,” engineering consultant Jim Peters said.

Re-lining the sewers should cut the amount of water treated at the plant by at least 10 percent.

So far, the city has completed work in two of the eight subdivisions that will see the sewer improvements. Work should wrap up by late 2010.