South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Giant sewage spill leads to large fines, river of doubts
Private contractor must pay $200K
The stench lingered for weeks after a sewage spill overwhelmed more than 3 miles of Broward County canals with human excrement and wastewater. The contamination last January killed fish, frogs, iguanas, even a manatee.
A private contractor doing work on the state’s Interstate
95 widening project had struck a 42-inch pressurized sewer line in Pompano Beach. The force of the sewage pushed through the
C-1 Canal wall at Northwest
15th Street and flowed for six days through a 2.5-foot hole in the pipe that was 17 feet underground.
The total volume of sewer water that poured into the canal that runs along the east side of I-95 was staggering: 52 million gallons, the largest spill on record in the county, officials said.
The canal in the Garden Isles community in Pompano Beach was polluted during a massive sewage spill in January, killing fish and wildlife.
Now the contractor involved has agreed to pay almost $200,000 in state and county fines while Pompano Beach continues to try to recoup clean-up and repair costs of possibly several million dollars.
People are paddleboarding, canoeing and boating on the affected waterways again, and residents say fish and wildlife have returned as well, but there’s still
unease about what the spill did to the water.
“We’re still concerned. We don’t know what the long-term effects are going to be,” said Lauren DePaci of Garden Isles, a neighborhood of finger isles south of Atlantic Boulevard along the Pompano Canal, which was polluted by the spill.
“The fish are back. Wouldn’t eat them,” she said.
Officials said there is no continuing threat to public safety, that there is no bacteriological component to any remaining sediment from the spill.
The spill was bigger than two of the county’s other largest spills combined: 20 million gallons in 2011 and 15 million gallons in 2008, both in Hollywood, said Carlos Adorisio, an engineering unit supervisor with the county’s environmental engineering and permitting department.
It’s more than double the 20.6 million gallons of raw sewage that leaked through broken lines into Fort Lauderdale’s waterways over three and a half years. Those breaks led the state to step in, requiring the city to implement a plan for fixing its aging pipes.
Pompano Beach agreed to pay a separate $6,000 county fine because it did not notify nearby residents of its spill and the health risks until three days after the break occurred.
Levels of bacteria, including in the Pompano waterways stayed above acceptable levels for
“We’re still concerned. We don’t know what the long-term effects are going to be . ... The fish are back. Wouldn’t eat them.”
E Coli,
Lauren DePaci,
Garden Isles resident
weeks. At one point, 147 aerators were being used to pump oxygen into the water to break down the bacteria.
The new fine agreement is with Prince Contracting, according to documents approved by county commissioners Dec. 3.
The company will also do additional repair work near the site where the sewage pushed through the canal wall, removing some sediment and sand on the canal bottom, the agreement said.
The additional work is not related to health concerns, but is designed to return the shape and depth of the canal to what it was before its side was blown out, Adorisio said.
The Florida Department of Transportation hired Prince Contracting for work on the I-95 project, which included laying electrical conduits underground. Another company, subcontractor Arc Electric, did that portion of the work for Prince. The break was caused by drilling that hit the sewer line.
Mayor Rex Hardin said the City Attorney’s Office is seeking reimbursement from the contractor’s insurance company and said the city expects to be fully reimbursed for its costs.
City officials on Thursday could not provide information on how much the city spent to handle the repairs and cleanup.
Hardin did not know the exact costs, but said it could be in the range of several million dollars.
“We’re aggressively working to recoup our expenses in the matter,” Hardin said.
It wasn’t the only time this year a private contractor doing underground work created havoc by breaking a line. In July, Fort Lauderdale’s water supply dried up after a Florida Power & Light Co. contractor drilled into a line taking water from a well field near Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport to the city’s Fiveash Water Treatment Plant.
In September , Fort Lauderdale officials sent a letter to FPL demanding $558,000 to cover the city’s costs.
Similar letters were sent to Florida Communication Concepts Inc. and Infratech, two FPL subcontractors; GEO & YUS Corp., the company that did the actual boring for FCC; and Amerisure Mutual Insurance Company, which insures FCC.
City Attorney Alain Boileau said there have been later communications with the companies regarding the payment demands, but he said Wednesday he could not discuss them.