Spills dump raw sewage in Buffalo Bayou
Over 300,000 gallons released as compromised banks rupture pipes
More than 300,000 gallons of raw sewage spilled into Buffalo Bayou from a broken pipe near the intersection of Gessner and Briar Forest on Thursday and Friday, Houston officials said.
Two sections of the south bank of the bayou, eroded by Hurricane Harvey floodwaters, collapsed Thursday, rupturing a 42inch sewer pipe near 9602 Longmont, affecting the immediate area and up to 300 feet downstream.
A 21-inch pipe that connected to the larger line also ruptured due to a bank failure just downstream, said Alanna Reed, spokeswoman for the Department of Public Works and Engineering.
The incident does not affect the safety of the city’s drinking water and appears not to have interrupted wastewater service for customers in the area.
Crews were working Friday to finish a project to divert the sewage that otherwise would have flowed through the lines, an undertaking Reed said was made difficult by the unstable ground along the waterway swollen by weeks of releases from Addicks and Barker reservoirs after Hurricane Harvey.
“We’re looking at up to six months to get everything, one, stabilized and, two, deciding what’s going to be next,” Reed said. “Are we going to put these wastewater lines under the street instead of along the bayou? We know rain is going to come and this could happen again.”
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality requires cities to notify residents of any sewage spill larger than 100,000 gallons or in excess of 50,000 gallons if it occurs in an area with private drinking water wells. This was the first notification Public Works published during or after Harvey. Officials asked residents to avoid swimming in the area and to bathe and wash clothes as soon as possible if they come into contact with raw sewage.
Thursday’s rupture pushed the total spills caused by Harvey to 231 in Harris County, and the total gallons of raw sewage spilled in connection with the storm to more than 3.6 million gallons, according to TCEQ. The agency considers four sewage treatment plants in the county still inoperable, two months after Harvey made landfall.
Houston’s Turkey Creek and West District plants are both back online after being submerged during Harvey. Residents on the west side were asked for several days after the storm to limit their water usage to prevent overloading the compromised treatment plants.
Reed said the city has no cost estimate for the repairs that were required at either facility, or for the repairs ongoing related to the bayou bank failures.