12.03.08
Wednesday Headlines: Two Million Gallon Sewage Spill in Delaware
A two million gallon sewage spill in Delaware has closed the Mispillion River from Milford to the Delaware Bay. A major sewer line along state Route 1 north of Milford broke, causing the discharge. The State Water Resources Director county sewage system managers had no choice but to divert sewage into the river. Two food processing plants halted production to help curb the discharge.
Headlines
As part of a pilot program aimed at reducing sewer blockages and overflows and accidental spills, the Raleigh suburb of Cary, North Carolina is encouraging residents to save their cooking oils, fats and grease in sealable containers. According to the town, such refuse contributed to 16 sewer overflows in 2006 and six overflows in 2007.
A water main break this morning flooded an intersection in southeast Rochester, New York. City crews are working in the area today, and dug a large hole to work on the water main.
Two northbound lanes of 50th Street in Tampa, Florida are closed while the city’s Water Department repairs a broken 24-inch water main. Restoration of the road surface is expected to be completed by the end of the week.
A local fitness facility in Norton Shores, Michigan may reopen today after being closed due to a water main break.
Sewer Rate News
Carlsbad, California
Frisco, Texas
Marietta, Ohio
Muncie, Indiana
12.02.08
Tuesday Headlines: Water Main Break Causes Power Outage in Flint, Michigan
More than 1,500 customers in Genesee County, Michigan were still without power Monday afternoon after water main break in downtown Flint. The water main break also shut down a road and closed some businesses. Cold weather is being blamed for the break.
Headlines
In Kentucky, Jeffersonville Mayor Tom Galligan took control of the city’s sewer system yesterday, dismissing the private contractor that had been running it since 1994. Approximately 10 more workers will be added to improve cleaning and maintenance of sewer lines and boost the system’s performance.
The Valdosta, Georgia area suffered two wastewater spills over the weekend resulting from heavy rainfall. Approximately 6.5 million gallons of untreated wastewater was released in the first incident, and a discharge of approximately 135,000 gallons of raw sewage was released in the second incident.
Because of a sewage spill, people are being encouraged to temporarily stay away from a ravine in Thousand Oaks, California. A root blockage in a sewer line led to the release of about 2,100 gallons of sewage from a manhole cover.
Tucson Water workers expect to fix a University of Arizona area water main break some time Tuesday. The break in in the 8-inch water main has disrupted traffic but should be repaired today.
Sewer Rate News
Birdsboro, Pennsylvania
Northport, Alabama
Westminster, Maryland
12.01.08
Monday Headlines: City of San Francisco Begins Payouts for Sewage Damage
Nearly five years after San Francisco experienced a storm that overwhelmed its aging sewer system, the city is beginning to pay out millions of dollars in settlements to businesses and homeowners. Businesses affected by the overflow will receive $612,000 from the city of San Francisco. The businesses were inundated by raw sewage in 2004, when stormwater caused it to overflow.
The story from the The San Francisco Examiner goes into further detail.
More than 1,000 miles of brick sewers, many built more than a century ago, carry flushed waste from bathrooms and sinks beneath the surface to treatment plants. The sewers also fill with stormwater during rainstorms, which can overwhelm the system and cause it to overflow.
A San Francisco Superior Court judge ruled earlier this year that The City is liable for property damage caused by the toxic sewage that brimmed out of the combined system in 2004.
11.24.08
Monday Headlines: Chesapeake Bay Cleanup to Cost Pennsylvania $1.4 Bil.
Upgrading sewer treatment systems to meet Chesapeake Bay cleanup mandates will cost Pennsylvania municipalities an estimated $1.4 billion, according to a new state legislative study. The study by the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee was authorized by the state Senate to find out how much the Chesapeake Bay Tributary Strategy will cost to implement.
Headlines
Warning signs were posted Sunday after thousands of gallons of sewage spilled out of manholes in several areas across Honolulu. This weekend’s heavy rains are being blamed for the overflows.
Havelock, North Carolina experienced a spill of untreated wastewater of estimated 60,000 gallons today, an estimated 10,000 of which reached State waters.
About 600 gallons of raw sewage spilled Friday onto a seaside road about a quarter-mile south of Hobson County Park in Ventura, California.
A home in Lancaster, Kentucky may be a total loss after a sewage backup ruined the basement and part of the front lawn. A sewer pipe that serves about 40 homes in the area had blockage in it caused by rags that may have been caught in a crack in the pipe.
A water main break in Waynesboro, Virginia created a small sinkhole and forced an elementary school to shut down Monday.
Sewer Rate News
Benton Harbor, Michigan
Delaware, Ohio
11.21.08
Friday Headlines: Town in Maine Looks to Repair Water Main Under I-95
Looking to repair a water main break under Interstate 95, the Board of Selectmen in Seabrook, Maine are considering replacing the main using directional drilling technology to pull a new pipe through a bore hole. The 12-inch, 350-foot water main remains shut off after it broke in two places in November 2007 and the cost of repair is estimated at $235,700.
Headlines
Town officials in Meyersdale, Pennsylvania are busily trying to figure out how to pay for $1.4 million in state mandated sewer work. The sewer work includes dredging sludge out of lagoons at the treatment plant, correcting combined sewer overflow problems and installing flow meters.
Customers of the Grand Rapids, Michigan water and sewer systems will face big rate increases next year, thanks to expansive upgrades and the defection of five suburbs from its sewer system. The average city resident will get a quarterly water and sewer bill of $168.10, an 8.2 percent jump over this year.
A broken water main in Chester, Vermont left some residents without water last night and forced the closure of a local high school for today.
For more than a week, the left lane of a key San Francisco artery has been closed by orange cones and sawhorses. The sinkhole, formed because of a broken sewer main, needs major repair. and patching the hole is in advisable because the hole might return and cause serious damage to a vehicle.
Sewer Rate News
Arkadelphia, Arkansas
Coldwater, Michigan
El Dorado, Arkansas
Sayre Borough, Pennsylvania
11.20.08
Thursday Headlines: Editorial Addresses Infrastructure in Economic Stimulus
An editorial in today’s Arizona Daily Star addresses the need for an economic stimulus package that includes investment in infrastructure. Although the editorial focuses on the need to put people back to work by addressing the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, it does specifically address the dire state of America’s wastewater systems.
Consider, for instance, the nationwide problem of sewage overflows. Many older cities have combined sewer-stormwater systems that overflow during big storms, dumping untreated waste into rivers and drinking-water reservoirs.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, at least $202 billion is needed to prevent sewer overflows at some 16,000 wastewater treatment plants across the country. While Congress can’t invest that kind of money immediately, it could make a down payment on a health threat that grows bigger every year.
11.19.08
Wednesday Headlines: 60-inch Water Main Breaks in Central New Jersey
In New Jersey, a break in a 60-inch water main break in Middlesex and Somerset Counties is affecting 100,000 customers and has partially collapsed part of the road above the pipe. A boil-water advisory remains in effect for the nearly 20 Central Jersey towns affected, and customers will be contacted by phone when it is lifted, which is projected to be around noon Thursday. Although the cause of the break is unknown the water main was installed in 1958.
Sewer Rate News
Lansing, Michigan’s long-term endeavor to reduce the flow of raw sewage is 59 percent completed and already seeing significant results. Annually, some 1.65 billion gallons of sewage went into the rivers before the CSO work started. That has been reduced by 585 million gallons a year. The work is not slated to end until 2020.
Astoria, Oregon under a federal consent decree, has a 20-year program to prevent sewage from overflowing into the Columbia River and Youngs Bay during heavy rainstorms. The latest project is the first phase of a two-phase CSO project, which will install new pipes to carry stormwater into the bay and construct a giant storage tank for sewage.
Traffic was restricted on a major Mesa, Arizona roadway Tuesday evening after a 12-inch water main leak caused a sinkhole in the road.
Work crews in Kalamazoo, Michigan worked through the night to dig out a couple of water main breaks. There are water main breaks all the time in this city, which is an older system where fluctuating temperatures (a common occurence this time of year) makes the ground heave and pipes burst.
Sewer Rate News
McKinleyville, California
Ranson, West Virginia
Sugarcreek, Ohio
11.18.08
Tuesday Headlines: Kansas City Moves Forward on Sewer Overflow Plan
After months of delays, Kansas City’s largest publicly financed project, an effort to improve its sewer system, moves forward this week. Yesterday city officials announced the latest version of a $2.4 billion plan to reduce sewer overflows into local streams during heavy rains–improvements that are required by the federal government.
Headlines
It’s called the Big Pipe project, and when it is completed in 2011 it is expected to reduce Portland, Oregon’s sewer overflows to three or four a year instead of every time it rains. The 20-year project will cost $1.4 billion and has been financed with sewer rate increases in recent years. It is the biggest construction project in the city’s history.
A water main break in Kalamazoo, Michigan has closed two schools for the day.
The University of Maryland experienced its second water main break in as many days after a 16-inch main broke near a campus parking lot. Age is believed to be the biggest factor in causing the break.
Basements of about approximately a half-dozen homes in Bellevue, Washington were flooded when a water main broke Monday morning.
Sewer Rate News
Ontario, California
Sandy Township, Pennsylvania
Waterford, Connecticut
11.13.08
Thursday Headlines: State of Michigan Forces City to Upgrade Sewer System
The city of Marysville, Michigan is poised to spend about $25 million to correct problems with its water and sewer systems. The plan would increase the capacity at the wastewater treatment plant from 2.4 million gallons a day to 3.4 million gallons a day, build an underground sanitary-sewer storage tank to reduce overflows, rehabilitate aging or damaged sewer lines and make general improvements to the water and wastewater treatment plants.
Headlines
A water main break in New Orleans has collapsed a large section of a woman’s front yard, including parts of her driveway, sidewalk and flower bed.
Nether Providence, Pennsylvania has provided the state Department of Environmental Protection with a detailed response on a sizable overflow that occurred in mid-September. The correspondence includes a plan by the township to prevent future incidents, which would spend more than $330,000 on an assortment of initiatives, including equipment purchases, repairs and monitoring programs.
A combination of recent rains and a plugged sewer line caused a sewage spill in Davenport, Iowa late Tuesday and early Wednesday.
A recent engineering analysis has revealed that a 250-foot section of century-old ceramic sewer pipe owned by the City of Barre Town, Vermont, and located more than a mile from a proposed residential development, will have to be replaced in order to handle the wastewater generated by more than five dozen new single-family homes.
Sewer Rate News
Camp Hill, Pennsylvania
Memphis, Missouri
Portage County, Ohio
11.12.08
Wednesday Headlines: Columbus Residents Support Rate Increase
Most speakers at a hearing on proposed water and sewer rate increases for Columbus, Ohio told the city council Tuesday night they supported the higher fees. The increase is to cover the cost of preventing overflow problems that damage creeks and rivers in the area.
Headlines
A one foot section of corroded pipe in Reno, Nevada on Monday caused a water main rupture sending thousands of gallons of water onto the roadway.
In Maryland, residents in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties can sign up for a service that will alert them via e-mail or mobile phone text message if a burst pipe has cut off water service to their home or will snarl traffic.
Aging water infrastructure and a dramatic rise in system repairs forced the city council in Stillwater, Oklahoma to take a look at the situation and find solutions Monday.
Several residents in the Kansas City suburb of Olathe, Kansas recently attended a city council meeting after enduring wastewater backup problems for more than a decade.
Sewer Rate News
Gretna, Pennsylvania
Hollister, Missouri
Portage Township, Michigan
Sugarcreek, Ohio
