Not something that you want to read about over the breakfast coffee but you can’t ignore 20,000 plus gallons of raw sewage spilling across PCH in Laguna Beach. The spill happened yesterday afternoon and forced the closure of the road. According to the Register there was at one point, fifty gallons a minute of raw sewage flowing onto the street due to the failure of a “a broken clamp around an air-relief valve”. Hm, looks like a sphincter gave.
“We have opened up our emergency operations center and are calling in extra staff to deal with it from all departments,†Kravetz said.
William Holoman, senior water-quality analyst with the city of Laguna Beach said about 20,000 gallons of raw sewage at Diamond Street and South Coast Highway was first spotted around 3:30 p.m., flowing about 50 gallons a minute. Exactly how many gallons of raw sewage had flowed into the street by late Thursday was still unclear, Kravetz said.
The spill appeared to have been caused by a broken clamp around an air-relief valve along the North Coast Interceptor, the main sewer line that transports raw sewage from central Laguna Beach to a treatment plant in Laguna Canyon, City Manager Ken Frank said in a news release.
Some sewage flowed through storm drains to beaches, closing all beaches from Cress Street to Rockledge Road for at least 24 hours, including Agate and Woods Cove beaches, Holoman said.
I guess this is one of those spills they can’t cover up or ignore. And sadly it’s still keeping PCH closed, the spill was going to be cleaned up by last night but it’s far worse then they could have imagined and the complications keep piling up. Avoiding the area would be my advice. The photos at the Times are disturbing to say the least.
More than 24 hours after a sewage leak flooded Coast Highway in Laguna Beach, tangling traffic and blocking access to the main artery through the city, officials are still laboring to repair the breach and say the road will remain closed through the evening commute. While the highway and Glenneyre Street are shut down between Cleo and Diamond streets, police are rerouting drivers from the normally clogged thoroughfares, sending cars onto narrow side streets above Bluebird Park, city officials said.
“It’s an absolute mess,” said Laguna Beach City Manager Ken Frank. “Everybody should stay away from Coast Highway.”
…
After several failed attempts, city officials temporarily shut down the Bluebird Pump Station this afternoon to relieve the pressure and facilitate the clamp’s repair. As a result, backed up sewage flowed from storm drains, sending another 10,000 gallons into the ocean at Bluebird Beach, Frank said.
A faulty rubber gasket on the new clamp is forcing city officials to shut down the pump station a second time, with more sewage spills possible.
Frank estimated that the city would be fined as much as $100,000 by the Regional Water Quality Control Board for the ocean contamination
According to Frank, the city has spent about $15 million on sewer system upgrades in recent years, and installed a $1.5 million pipeline near Nyes Place and Victoria Beach last month.
Isn’t that shitty.
Snif. That you Dana?
Crumbling infrastructure?
Economic downturns are great times to invest in public works.
Where’s OSHA when you need them?
That worker in the picture not wearing his head is just asking for trouble. With all that splattering doo doo,it just time before a particle gets lodge between his teeth.
that’s “head gear”