State to monitor repairs to Lauderdale sewers

Deadlines and fines are set out in detail

After spilling nearly 21 million gallons of raw sewage into local waterways and groundwater since 2014, Fort Lauderdale will be under scrutiny by state environmental regulators for years to come.

In an agreement the city is poised to approve Wednesday evening, the state lays out $117.5 million in required sewer system repairs and improvements, with specific deadlines in the next nine years; a fine for past spills, or “penalty proj-

ects” worth slightly more than $500,000, and fines for future spills.

Just since January this year, the city reported spilling 426,665 gallons of sewage into rivers, canals and other waterways in Fort Lauderdale.

That doesn’t count the latest spill, which the city reported Tuesday. Sewage spilled out of manholes on Bryan Place in the Sailboat Bend area, and 6,750 gallons of sewage entered storm drains to the New River, the city reported to the state.

Under the state’s proposed fines, a spill of 100,000 gallons of raw sewage like the city reported it spilled into the Intracoastal Waterway on Aug. 28 could cost the city $10,000. The fines are only applied if the state determines that the spill could have been prevented.

The worst of the city’s recent sewage spills was June 23, 2016, when workers were making a repair at the sewer plant. They switched off a final valve at 1 p.m., and almost immediately two aged, vulnerable sewer pipes across the city burst, one at George English Park and the other under the Himmarshee canal.

The environmental catastrophe allowed 13.7 million gallons of untreated sewage to gush into the canal and the Middle River. Both pipes were 35 years old. One was corroded and split; the other had a hole in it. In the early afternoon, as sewage continued to spill, workers diverted some of it into a “previously broken and out of service” 48-year-old cast iron pipe, but it had two holes in it, allowing sewage to leak directly into the river.

In a letter to the state, the city blamed the giant spill partly on “the age of the infrastructure.”

In February last year, workers were shutting off a broken major sewer pipe in the Tarpon River neighborhood, when residents of Regal Trace Apartments off Sistrunk Boulevard 2 miles away found raw sewage — 1.8 million gallons of it — gurgling into their parking lot. The pipe that suffered what the city described as a “catastrophic failure” was 50 years old and made of cast iron. Some of the sewage reached the New River.

The Tarpon River pipe never could be put back into service because it kept breaking, city officials said. It carried about 30 percent of the city’s sewage to the plant. For now, vacuum trucks are helping move sewage along, sucking it out of one manhole and dumping it into another. The city spent $2 million on the trucks from June to August, officials said. Last week, the city built an above-ground sewer pipe on Eighth Avenue leading to Las Olas Boulevard to help alleviate the overflowing pipes.

Under the order, the city must assess the condition of its force mains — the pipes pushing sewage through under pressure — and must map the entire pipe and valve system so repair workers can access the information.

Every six months, the city must provide a written progress report to the state Department of Environmental Regulation.

The consent order, a way to settle the city’s violations of state water pollution rules, is enforceable in court. If the city violates the order, the city faces fines of up to $10,000 per day, and possible criminal penalties, the document says.

City Manager Lee Feldman said the city plans to borrow $200 million in January to pay for the consent order projects and other critical work.