04.03.07
GROSS! Carlsbad lagoon contaminated by major sewage spill
This really makes me want to barf… I can see this lagoon from my house :(
Poor critters…
Original article found on the North County Times website, written by JO MORELAND - Staff Writer Last modified Tuesday, April 3, 2007 10:57 AM PDT
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CARLSBAD —- The odor of raw sewage drifted over the eastern end of the Buena Vista Lagoon on Monday as crews struggled to stop what Carlsbad officials said was the worst such spill in recent memory.
With the flow topping 4.1 million gallons as of 4 p.m. Monday, officials were asking residents in surrounding areas of Carlsbad, Oceanside and Vista to limit their use of indoor water to ease the impact on the lagoon and the repair efforts.
That means cutting back on laundry, dishwashing, baths, showers, toilet flushing and anything else that might require sewage disposal along the Highway 78 corridor near Jefferson Street and Marron Road, authorities said.
“The majority of this flow is from Vista,” said Don Wasko, wastewater superintendent for Carlsbad’s public works department.
As he spoke Monday, a small army of city workers and special contractors was setting up in the parking lot of a nature trail at the northeastern edge of the popular lagoon, just west of the Westfield Plaza Camino Real shopping center.
They will have to build a small, watertight dam to hold the lagoon water back from the spill, remove water from the leaking area, and dig possibly 20 feet deep to get to the pipe to find out whether part of it blew out or whether the line separated, said Glenn Pruim, Carlsbad’s public works director.
“We’ll be working on this 24 hours a day until it’s done,” Pruim said.
Signs warning of contaminated water have been posted along the lagoon and St. Malo Beach, south of Buccaneer Beach, in Oceanside.
Authorities said they are also checking to be sure the tributary leading from the lagoon into the Pacific Ocean was posted, too.
“It’s been posted as a precaution,” said Denise Vedder, Carlsbad city spokeswoman. “We don’t know if (the flow has) gone that far. We have to do additional testing.”
The warning signs will remain in place until samples confirm that the water is safe for recreational use, officials said.
The spill was discovered about 7 p.m. Sunday, according to the County of San Diego Department of Environmental Health. Pruim said he didn’t know whether someone using the lagoon reported the spill or whether a city employee discovered it.
The sewer line —- two feet in diameter —- is 25 years old and is pressurized to push effluent through, the public works director said. He said the line should have lasted about 50 years.
On Monday, a temporary line was being built above ground from the pump station just northeast of the lagoon to move sewage around the spill site at the crumbling edge of an earthen lagoon bank.
Seagulls dipped and turned above the sluggish, white-foamed sludge.
“By (Tuesday) afternoon this will look like a war zone,” said Pruim. “It couldn’t have happened at a worse place. Being so close to the lagoon we have no place to contain the flow.”
He said he has been told the city may face a state fine of unknown size because of the spill.
A fine will depend on such things as the cause of the spill, whether there was any negligence, the city’s response to the emergency, and Carlsbad’s history of sewage spills, said Eric Becker, water resources control engineer for the state’s San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board.
Pruim said state Fish and Game authorities have been notified, but that he hadn’t heard of or seen any dead fish or birds yet. A Fish and Game spokesperson couldn’t be reached for comment.
“We’ve been up front and told them we can’t stop it,” Pruim said. “There will be some environmental impact.”
Exactly what that impact might be wasn’t known yet, he said.
Meanwhile, drivers in the area won’t be able to use Jefferson Street south of the Marron Road intersection until repairs can be completed, possibly as early as this afternoon, the public works director said.
“We’re going to have to do a lot of repair,” said Carlsbad Councilman Mark Packard, looking over the spill site. He said “we’ve never had anything like this” in the years he’s been on the council.
The repair costs weren’t known yet, but Packard said the city has contingency funds.
As authorities marshaled repair efforts Monday, bright blue tanker trucks were sucking up sewage at the pump station on the northeast side of the lagoon and delivering the muck to a gravity flow line on the other side of the spill area.
That was one of the things making it difficult to determine how much sewage was actually going into the lagoon, city personnel said. Pruim said the line was being shut down at times so sewage could be sucked out, so it wasn’t a constant flow.
The city put a flow monitor on the spill Monday evening to get a better estimate of the amount going into the lagoon, Purim said.
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UPDATE - Last modified Tuesday, April 3, 2007 12:39 PM PDT
Crews working to repair sewage pipe at Carlsbad lagoon
CARLSBAD —- Crews were working on a replacement pipe this morning for a broken sewage line that spilled more than 4.1 million gallons into the Buena Vista Lagoon recreation area by Monday evening.
Officials still didn’t know how much more sewage might have drained overnight into the lagoon through a pipe two feet in diameter that had a hole “three fist sizes long,” said Cari Dale, public works assistant and general manager for the Carlsbad Municipal Water District.
There was much less spill last night, because less sewage was pumped and workers were doing a good job of containing the flow from the leak, said Glenn Pruim, Carlsbad’s public works director.
The spill, which was originally reported to have started Sunday evening but is now being reported to have started Saturday night, may be one of the worst spills in recent San Diego County history.
Despite contamination signs, Oceanside officials said the spill wasn’t driving people away from beaches during what is spring break week for many. State lifeguards couldn’t be reached for comment about the spill’s effect on beaches in Carlsbad.
The contaminated water signs have been posted for along a mile of beaches between Cassidy Street in Oceanside and the 2600 block of Carlsbad Boulevard in Carlsbad.
“If anything, it’s probably increased our (beach) population here, because a lot of people that were going to go to the Carlsbad beaches are coming to this beach area,” said David Wagner, Oceanside seasonal lifeguard supervisor.
Wagner said on an average warm spring day about 10,000 people are at the Oceanside beaches.
“I don’t think there’s any problem with people going onto the beaches, as long as they don’t go in the water,” said Pruim, Carlsbad’s public works director.
While major repair work was under way today at the lagoon spill near Jefferson Street and Marron Road, another smaller spill was discovered at 7:30 a.m. today in Carlsbad. It was off South Melrose Drive, between Faraday Avenue and Palomar Airport Road.
The latest leak from a line shared by Vista and Carlsbad appears to be unrelated to the lagoon spill, said Jenny Peterson, Vista public information officer.
Pruim said today that some “fish kills” have occurred at Buena Vista Lagoon, but authorities weren’t sure whether they are related to the sewage line break.
He said he didn’t know how many dead fish were found or where at the lagoon, but that fish and game employees will determine whether the kills are spill-related.