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Sewage spill may lead to penalty

A loss of power at a lift station brings 3,000 gallons of untreated wastewater near a neighborhood. An official says the spill was confined to a ditch.

By CHUIN-WEI YAP
Published May 23, 2006

LAND O'LAKES - Pasco County faces a possible fine from the state Department of Environmental Protection after a lift station on Carson Drive spewed 3,000 gallons of untreated sewage into a nearby field and a ditch Sunday.

The spill apparently resulted from the main circuit breaker that tripped and cut off power, in turn knocking out the spill alarm system.

Department officials would not estimate a penalty figure before they complete their investigations. The county was fined $2-million last year, in part for a 21-million-gallon sewage spill at Lake Bernadette in Zephyrhills.

The lift station sits at the head of Carson Drive, just northeast of the intersection of U.S. 41 and State Road 54.

It broke down about 4 p.m., said DEP spokeswoman Pamela Vasquez.

"It was like a spring bubbling up in the middle of the grass," said Nancy Lockman, a Carson Drive resident.

Resident Lynne Picou offered a less flattering description: "It looked chunky. It definitely smelled like bathroom. It was inches deep. It wasn't just trickling. It was big."

A preliminary county report said the flow was stanched about 5:30 p.m., Vasquez said.

But by then, the ditch running east toward a creek and a field west of Countryside Montessori preschool were sodden with sewage, according to photographs taken by residents Ed and Vini Krufka.

The area is home to seven lakes that ultimately feed Hillsborough County's drinking water supply.

But Vasquez said the spill was contained to the ditch. "There was no surface water or stormwater damage," she said.

County workers spread lime as part of a standard procedure to treat contaminated soil, said Bruce Kennedy, Pasco's utilities director.

Apart from evaluating a possible fine, DEP does not intend to take further action, Vasquez said. The county has five days to file a formal report, she said.

Neighbors say they complain of the lift station's chronically failing, to no avail.

"Pasco just keeps saying they fixed the problem," said Judy Jayne, a resident since 1978.

Stacy Radcliff, Countryside's principal, said she calls county officials at least twice each summer to fix bad odors from the station. On Monday, a whiff of the spill was still in the air, but school went on as normal, Radcliff said.

A toll-free distress call number is tacked up outside the station, but Kennedy said the problem is that calls to that number are routed to 911 dispatch offices.

"We have not kept that kind of information (on complaints)," he said. "We can go back and look through the logs, but you've got to manually search through it."

County officials responded Sunday only after residents called sheriff's deputies, who in turn alerted the utilities crew.

Kennedy said the department wants to install a customer information system that creates service requests with each call.

The station could also use a backup generator and automatic dialer to alert authorities of spills, Kennedy said.

Larger lift stations have backup generators that kick in during commercial power outages, but the Carson Drive station - about 30 years old - does not, he said.

Carson Drive, an old neighborhood with about 100 homes, is the main artery in a collection of dead ends. Neighbors fear the lift station's capacity will not be able to handle more residential growth.

The developer Mobley Homes has a 60-unit condominium proposal across from the station. Neighbors have mobilized against the proposal, citing traffic and septic capacity concerns.

Kennedy said a new development would present an opportunity to re-examine the station's capacity and need for upgrades.

In the meantime, the department is working on diverting septic flow from the Carson Drive area to the sewer system serving the Oakstead development farther west along SR 54.

"We did everything we could reasonably do here," Kennedy said.

Chuin-Wei Yap covers growth and development in Pasco County. He can be reached at cyap@sptimes.com or 813 909-4613.

[Last modified May 23, 2006, 01:30:12]