More than 175,000 gallons of wastewater released into SLO County creek. What caused spill?
More than 175,000 gallons of water spilled into a Cambria creek on March 10 as an atmospheric river-fed storm swept through San Luis Obispo County, officials confirmed.
Swiftly flowing floodwaters overtopped a Cambria Community Services District sewage lift station and water well, triggering a sewage spill notice from the San Luis Obispo County Department of Public Health that afternoon.
“Fortunately, not a lot of sewage goes to that station,” which gets most of its flow from the Tin Village industrial area in Cambria, district general manager Ray Dienzo said Wednesday. “During the time of the storm, that area was evacuated.”
Dienzo said the incident happened when the water in Santa Rosa Creek “rose to a point where the pumps that were submerged in water became nonfunctional and couldn’t pump.”
“It was deemed a spill, because we have to assume sewage did spill,” he added.
Although authorities weren’t sure March 10 how much wastewater entered the creek, Dienzo on Wednesday put the official estimate at about 177,000 gallons.
By March 11, the water level in Santa Rosa Creek had subsided sufficiently for district technicians to safely get to and assess the lift station situation.
They then set up a temporary bypass.
“When repairs were made and electrical service was restored to the site, they found that, miraculously, one of the pumps was operational,” Dienzo said.
”New parts are on order for the damaged pumps,” he said.
For now, Dienzo said, “The one pump is able to keep up.”
Cambria CSD saw damage from storm
That wasn’t the only storm-related damage seen in the Cambria Community Services District.
Dienzo said the storm also flooded the San Simeon wellfield, destroyed some district facilities in the Rodeo Grounds Road area, flooded a water well there, and overtopped another remote lift station.
District Water Department personnel halted production at the San Simeon wellfield in anticipation of flooding at the site, which is along San Simeon Creek.
Dienzo said workers didn’t start production up again until they’d analyzed the water quality and deemed it to be safe to operate.
However, he said he’s leaving it up to the water staff to determine when to restart the system there.
According to Dienzo, the rising waters did not impair the CSD’s Rodeo Grounds Road water booster station.
“Looks like we dodged a bullet again,” Dienzo said. “The actual water level didn’t get up to a level where it damaged it.
“The district hasn’t used the Rodeo Grounds water well in months,” he said, because the quality of the water from that source isn’t as good as that of the water from the CSD’s primary wells by Coast Union High School and along San Simeon Creek.
The high school well wasn’t affected by flooding creek waters or the storm, according to Dienzo.
He said the damaged Rodeo Grounds Road facilities were the same ones which were nearly destroyed by a flood a few years ago.
