At least 500,000 gallons spewed in Sausalito sewage spill
Jim Staats
Marin Independent Journal
02/18/2009
A broken pipe gushed at least 500,000 gallons of partially treated sewage into San Francisco Bay by Wednesday afternoon as Sausalito sanitary plant officials worked to get the spill capped more than 24 hours after it was spotted.
Bob Simmons, general manager of the Sausalito-Marin City Sanitary District, said at about 5 p.m. the spill "was virtually stopped now" with a release rate of 1 gallon per minute.
Workers in wetsuits placed a metal "saddle" around the 24-inch-wide pressure pipeline resting along the shore below the Fort Baker treatment plant to redirect wastewater back into the plant.
Simmons said complete repair of the pipe was estimated to be done by Friday at the latest.
The spill was first detected at about 1 p.m.
Tuesday at the district's treatment plant at 1 Fort Baker Road in the Golden Gate National Recreational Area.
After several hours of unsuccessful attempts to plug the 2 1/2-inch hole before being submerged, the leak was allowed to continue overnight until work continued Wednesday morning.
At noon Wednesday, a steady stream of gray water continued to shoot into the bay as health officials got the word out about pollution concerns.
"This situation is unfortunate," said Simmons, noting the district's largest previous spill was a 63,000-gallon spill last January.
Simmons said the hole likely was caused by corrosion of the 23-year-old pipe.
He said officials couldn't divert flow from the pipe because all pipes in the cramped plant
"This treatment plant has some challenges that most plants don't have," Simmons said. Part of the plant was built in 1953 with other portions built in 1987.
He said leaked water was 60 percent treated sewage with solids removed, but it had yet to go through the biological process and hadn't been disinfected.
Warning signs indicating sewage contamination were posted along nearby shoreline including Swede's
Becky Ng, interim deputy director of the county Environmental Health Services, recommended that people stay out of the water in the surrounding area. Officials expected test results of initial water samples Thursday. She said preliminary tests taken at Horseshoe Cove and Rodeo Beach "looked good."
Ng said officials needed two consecutive days of clean water samples for the water to be considered not polluted.
Bruce Wolfe oversees all local spills as executive officer of the California Regional Water Quality Control Board, San Francisco Bay Region. He said having the pipe in question, which moves sewage from primary to secondary treatment, in the surf line was "not something we'd typically want to see," but it was done because of the plant's tight hillside location.
"We'll look at that," he said.
Last year, the district was one of nine Southern Marin sewage agencies ordered to submit improvement plans to the Environmental Protection Agency last year in response to the federal agency's orders in April to fix chronic problems including spills, sewer maintenance and a network of aging pipes. The orders followed federal inspections of the districts in August and October 2007.
Ken Greenberg, chief of the EPA's clean water compliance office, said the agency had issued an earlier order against the Sausalito district in May 2007 over discharge limit violations at the plant. He said replacement or elimination of the problem pipe was among a series of improvements the district had been planning in response to the order.
"We know under our first order, they were implementing measures to provide additional safeguards at that treatment plant," Greenberg said. "It's too early to say our next steps (in response to this spill). We will be going back and talking with them."
Simmons said the $7 million district improvement plan, recently approved by the district board, was in the planning stages.
Amy Chastain, staff attorney with San Francisco Baykeeper, said of the spill, "We're disappointed like everyone else. ... All of these plants are supposed to have emergency procedures in place to deal with these spills. They should have had a plan to stop flow into that part of the system."
Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, has long been a proponent of consolidating Southern Marin sewage agencies to better prevent - and respond to - problems such as this week's spill. "The reason these pipes are under so much pressure and spewing tens of thousands of gallons an hour is not because everybody is flushing their toilets all of a sudden," he said.
He blamed the problem on "an incredibly leaky, neglected collection system" and "small banana-republic sewer districts" afraid to do anything because of rate increases.
"At some point, if we want to stop seeing massive sewage spills every single time we have serious storms, we've got to do something about that governance and accountability piece of this problem so we can get at the neglected infrastructure piece."
John Roberts, who rowed to shore at Schoonmaker Point Marina in Sausalito from his Richardson Bay anchor out, had to laugh at the latest spill.
"If everyone who owned a boat (on the bay) did it over the side for a year, it wouldn't be even a quarter of the amount that's being spilled down there," he said.on a steep slope just south of downtown Sausalito were connected and pressurized. City officials in Sausalito, Tiburon and Belvedere also have posted signs along their shores. Park officials closed a fishing pier near Horseshoe Cove.
