 |
|
            |
Press Article San Diego Union-Tribune Sewage spill from creek closes Mission Bay City repair crews took more than week to respond to report By Terry Rodgers Mission Bay was quarantined yesterday because of a major sewage spill, and San Diego wastewater officials scrambled to explain why it took city repair crews 10 days to respond to a report of the overflow. An estimated 11/2 million gallons of raw sewage entered Tecolote Creek and eventually reached Mission Bay before Metro Wastewater Department crews arrived Wednesday and partially cleared a sewage line that had become clogged with rocks and debris. Mission Bay Park's 2,300 acres of water surface were put off-limits to swimming and other recreational uses for at least two more days or until bacteria testing confirms the waters are safe, public health officials said. Signs warning the public of the contamination were posted along the bay's 27 miles of shoreline. With nearly 15 million visitors annually, the bay is one of San Diego's biggest tourist draws. It is the largest raw sewage overflow into Mission Bay since 1995, when 11 million gallons reached the bay from Rose Creek. Also, the spill occurred one year after 34 million gallons of untreated sewage flowed undetected for a week into Alvarado Creek, fouling the San Diego River and closing beaches for three days. San Diego was fined $3.45 million for that spill, the largest penalty in state history for a sewage overflow. An engineer with the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board said he discovered the latest spill Feb. 19 while hiking in Tecolote Canyon Natural Park and called the city's emergency sewer and water repair hotline. "I reported that I had seen a sewage spill occurring in the canyon from a manhole a short distance upstream from Mount Acadia (Boulevard)," Bruce Posthumus said yesterday. He said nobody called him to follow up. "I thought the city would have been out there to take care of it," he said. The city probably will face penalties for the latest incident, said John Robertus, executive director of the regional board, which enforces the state's water-pollution laws. A 1991 state order requires San Diego to visually inspect its most vulnerable sewer lines, located in erosion-plagued canyons. "They need to get their people out walking the canyons," said Robertus, who yesterday ordered the city to give the board an explanation of its response to the spill. A city wastewater official said sewer crews inspected portions of Tecolote Canyon after last week's rains, but not the section north of Mount Acadia Boulevard, where a blockage kept sewage from entering a drainage system and instead dumped it into the creek. "We have been in the canyon both upstream and downstream of the spill area, but I don't know why this particular section was not inspected," said Charles Yackly. City crews finally were sent to the site of the spill Wednesday -- after another Regional Water Quality Control Board official called to find out why no one had responded to Posthumus' original report, city and water board officials said. Workers yesterday bulldozed a 200-yard-long corridor through coastal sage scrub so heavy equipment could finish clearing debris from the pipeline. After crews had cleared what debris they could by hand, a camera probe showed the line was still partially obstructed and might clog again without additional work. Metro Wastewater officials said an internal investigation is under way to find out why Posthumus' phone message was not immediately relayed to city repair crews. Elected city officials were upset when informed about the latest sewage incident. "I'm gravely concerned," said Mayor Dick Murphy. "Mission Bay is probably our key water recreational resource. "We have, I think, for years neglected the protection of water quality in that bay. I'm hoping we're starting down the path in which we'll be able to prevent these things from happening in the future." Murphy was briefed on the spill yesterday at the inaugural meeting of his newly formed Clean Water Task Force, which discussed doubling the amount of aging sewer lines replaced each year from 25 to 50 miles. Last year, the city recorded 364 sewage spills. Among environmentalists long critical of the city's track record, the new incident brought further condemnation. "This was something that was completely preventable, and the city failed to act," said Donna Frye, an environmental activist and City Council candidate from Clairement, where the spill originated. "This was not an act of God or an act of nature," she said. "This was the result of people failing to act." San Diego's emergency sewage response system has had problems in the past. In 1991, a ruptured sewer main spewed 5 million gallons and went unrepaired for two days because of a communications snafu between a dispatcher and a mobile repair crew. The city was fined $50,000 and ordered to ensure follow-up calls after every reported sewage spill. After the 34 million-gallon spill in February 2000, the city installed a much-touted, $515,000 early-warning system last fall. The system uses computerized flow monitors to detect dramatic drops in sewage flow throughout the city's 2,850 miles of sewer lines. However, the system failed to detect the Tecolote Creek spill because the flows inside the pipeline never varied more than 25 percent above or below normal, Metropolitan Wastewater Director Dave Schlesinger said yesterday. San Diego Councilman Byron Wear said yesterday that the early-warning system should be adjusted to detect smaller changes in sewer flow. County health officials said they also didn't detect the sewage leak through routine water testing at the mouth of Tecolote Creek because heavy rainfall last week rendered the contamination indistinguishable from polluted urban runoff. © Copyright 2001 Union-Tribune Publishing Co. |
|
Paid for by Re-Elect Donna Frye Web |
|
