It's A Hot Sewage Summer
From Virginia to California, Sewage Spills Impact Recreational Waterways
Jump in, the water’s fine, they say. Just don’t open your mouth.
Well, the sh*t has hit the fan, again. At least three large sewage spills have impacted well known swimming and recreational water areas across the country.
Let’s dive in.
Two Los Angeles-area beaches shut down for 48 hours earlier this week when an estimated 15,000 gallons of untreated sewage spilled into a nearby creek.
The cause of the sewage discharge was a broken water main that pushed sand into the sewer causing the blockage, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said in a news release.
Just last week, we were talking about infrastructure… and how a water main breaks in the U.S. every 2 minutes or so, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) Infrastructure Report Card. This gross spill is just another example of what happens from those incidents.
Red signs dotted across the beach told people not to swim or surf in parts of Dockweiler State Beach and Venice Beach.
“Personally when I see signs, I don’t go in. It’s common sense,” Bernard Lizon, a resident of Venice Beach who was walking his dog Poppy in the neighborhood on Tuesday morning told The New York Times. But he said he had seen people in the water over the past few days. “No one can enforce it,” he said about the rules.
The affected beaches remained closed until water quality tests indicated that bacterial levels met health standards, according to the Department of Public Health news release.
“Water contact may cause someone to become ill,” according to water quality advisories posted online.
Unfortunately, this sewage spill is not the first one for the area. More than 14,000 gallons of sewage spilled into Ballona Creek in May, also forcing beach closures.
Los Angeles has also had much larger sewage spills including one in late 2021 when about 8.5 million gallons of untreated sewage spilled into a flood-control waterway. That spill, which was caused by a collapsed concrete pipe, forced at least five beaches to temporarily close.
Meanwhile in Northern California, SFGATE reported a massive sewage spill that closed down Lake Tahoe beaches and affected local businesses on July 18.
In this case, a contractor drilled through the sewer main in Carnelian Bay, a neighborhood on Tahoe’s north shore, spilling an estimated 125,000 gallons of sewage onto streets and beaches and into Lake Tahoe.
Untreated sewage pooled in a parking lot and then overflowed into the water, just as people were finishing dinner at a lakefront restaurant nearby.
Crews from North Tahoe Public Utility District arrived on the scene, joined by first responders and neighboring utility districts, who helped with the cleanup and repaired the pipeline.
The cleanup effort contained some 40,000 gallons of raw sewage before it reached the lake, but about 85,000 gallons of sewage floated into the water that night.
Local officials issued a health advisory in the Carnelian Bay area of Lake Tahoe, advising that bacteria levels may be high in the area and that water contact could cause illness.
They also report that there is no risk to the public drinking water system.
Across the country in Richmond, Virginia, the capital city of the state, readings of the James River have shown high levels of E. Coli concentration, according to the James River Association.
The Virginia Department of Health and the Richmond Department of Public Utilities issued a joint press release regarding unsafe river conditions in the James, the longest river in Virginia, as a result of a sewage release that began on July 16 and is ongoing.
The high level of E. Coli is likely linked to sewage leaking from a broken pipe, as well as an increase in sewage leakage from the city's combined sewer overflow system.
“We anticipate, unfortunately, high E. Coli levels when we have combined sewer overflow events after high precipitation,” said Tom Dunlap, the James River Keeper with the James River Association. “But right now, we also have this dry weather release that’s occurring at what appears to be a broken sanitary sewer pipe, that pipeline, which is causing high E. Coli readings outside of these rainfall events that would otherwise create these situations where our recreational community knows to avoid the river.”
He also told a local news station, “This is old infrastructure, and thankfully the City had been, prior to this event, diverting the sanitary sewer line away from that section of pipe that seems to be compromised, but that’s a temporary fix and we need long terms solutions, and those long-term solutions cost money and they take time unfortunately.”
Anyone interested in safe use of the James River can utilize the James River Watch website for weekly updates during the summer.
Estimates for fixing the combined sewer overflow system, which may cause problems even after the pipe is fixed, could cost around $650 million.
Richmond Mayor Levar M. Stoney said, “We need more help from the state to find a solution to this problem, this combined sewer overflow.”
All the more reason, we need to ensure that funding for water infrastructure goes to the right sources. It’s only a matter time until more sewage spills.
In the 1970s, Virginia Governor Mills Godwin Jr. shut down the James River to fishing for 100 miles, from Richmond to the Chesapeake Bay. This ban remained in effect for 13 years, until efforts to clean up the river began to show results.
Let’s not let history repeat itself. Long-standing environmental protections have helped nurse the James back to health, but that progress is tentative, according to the 2023 State of the James report card.
Today, some 2.7 million people rely on the James River for water, making it Virginia’s largest source of drinking water.
Keep the story going in the comments below. Has there been a sewage spill near you this summer?