MURRIETA -- During her evening walks, Peggy Goffman can smell the problem.

"You can go by some of these houses, and you can smell sewer," Goffman said of the smell that seeps from underground septic tanks.

For years, Goffman has been pushing for the city to install a sewer system in her neighborhood --- a section of downtown Murrieta with a high concentration of houses, all of which use septic tanks to hold their waste.

Now, she can stop the pushing.

Earlier this month, the Western Municipal Water District board of directors awarded a contract to a San Diego contractor, E.J. Meyer Company, to install sewers on First, Second, Third, A, B and C streets. Construction could begin in November, and the project is scheduled to be completed within four months of the starting date, a water district spokeswoman said.

Jeff Sims, the water district's assistant general manager, said the project will cost $1.9 million and will be paid for in part with a nearly $1 million grant Murrieta was awarded from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The rest of the bill will be covered by the water district.

"We pump water out of that groundwater, and we want to protect it," Sims said. "It takes a long time for things to leak (from septic systems), but they've been there for a long time, so it's better now to start working on those things before a real problem begins."

Septic tanks will be cleaned, then either filled with sand or crushed, and the public sewer line will extend to each property. The sewer installation project is an effort to prevent the district from shutting down another well, which is what happened in 2006 when a "house well" located in the downtown area was found to have a high concentration of nitrates, Sims said. The high nitrate count could be related to tank seepage, but it could also have resulted from the use of fertilizers when the land was primarily used for agriculture, he said.

"There's just so many houses on septic systems," Sims said. "That water can have whatever is in your resident waste stream, dishwashing soap and whatever."

Residents will be asked to foot only the bill to connect their properties to the public line, which the water district estimates will cost about $9,000 per home. For those who qualify, the Riverside County Redevelopment Agency and the city have set aside $2.3 million in financial assistance.

"You can't believe how happy I am for the people who live in our historic downtown," said Councilman Warnie Enochs, who sat with Mayor Rick Gibbs and members of the water district on a downtown sewer subcommittee to get the project started.

One resident in the neighborhood wasn't very pleased with the idea, though.

"We're so used to running off the septic that it's part of our lives," said 20-year-old Michael Brennan, a Second Street resident. Brennan said he was concerned that his family wouldn't qualify for assistance and would be forced to foot the costs themselves.

"We like it the way we are out here," he said.

Shaloe Nations, another resident in the area that will receive sewers, said she didn't mind relying on a septic system when she moved into her home on Second Street. But having lived in San Diego where sewers were the norm, she isn't resistant to the switch, either.

"There's always that worry that something's going to back up or go wrong," she said.

But in the eyes of 71-year-old Goffman, a sewer system is "definitely needed," in that area.

"We've been fighting for it since before they built all the new houses out here," she said. "We're all trying to be conservative, and that sewer's going to prevent all the wastewater from seeping into the ground."

Contact staff writer Nelsy Rodriguez at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2626, or nrodriguez@californian.com.