Feb 2, 2008 12:20 am US/Pacific
3 Million Gallons Of Sewage Spills Into SF Bay Arm
MILL VALLEY (CBS 5 / AP / BCN) ―
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South Marin Sanitation District's waste treatment facility that spilled sewage into Richardson Bay.
CBS
Nearly 3 million gallons of partially treated sewage and storm water spilled into an arm of the San Francisco Bay from a Marin County water treatment plant, authorities said Friday.
The accidental release occurred Thursday night into Richardson Bay, an arm of San Francisco Bay that stretches between Tiburon and Sausalito in Marin County.
The spill happened when rainwater overwhelmed a facility operated by the Sewerage Agency of Southern Marin and an emergency alarm system failed to alert officials, Marin County sheriff's Lt. Doug Pittman said.
It's estimated that 2.7 million gallons of sewage entered Richardson Bay and county health officials warned the public to avoid fishing or touching water in or around the Bay.
Public boating has not been affected by the spill and the Golden Gate Ferry system was not impacted, spokeswoman Mary Currie said.
The county's Environmental Services agency posted signs warning of possible contamination at beaches and waterfronts along Richardson Bay. They also conducted tests near the accident site to determine the extent of the spill and possible public health issues.
The spill happened after a worker at the Mill Valley treatment plant at 450 Sycamore Avenue failed to turn on enough pumps to handle the amount of water flowing into the facility during a storm Thursday night, according to Stephen Danehy, the sewerage agency's general manager.
Danehy said staff had gone home when the alarm was triggered around 4:30 p.m.
The emergency telephone notification service the facility uses for nighttime alerts also failed, leaving a voicemail for an on-duty staffer instead of calling Danehy directly, he said.
The problem wasn't discovered until an off-duty worker checked the facility's status remotely on the Internet around 8 p.m., Danehy said. The overflow was fixed a half-hour later.
The facility processes primarily residential wastewater for some 28,000 homes in southern Marin County.
Sanitation officials said none of the spill contained chlorine used to treat sewage and the communities of Mill Valley, Sausalito, Tiburon and Belvedere were notified of the spill.
Danehy said most of the wastewater that flooded into the Bay has been carried out by the tides, and that there will likely be little other clean-up needed.
"In the grand scheme of things, 2 million gallons is a lot of water," he said. "But going into the area where it drained into, it was a drop in the bucket. And this was diluted and treated, to some degree."
(© CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. The Associated Press and Bay City News contributed to this report.)
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