11.1 million gallons of partially treated wastewater flow into Stevenson Creek in Clearwater: Officials

Wastewater overflows into Stevenson Creek

Briona Arradondo reports

CLEARWATER, Fla. - Heavy rain in a short amount of time overwhelmed a Clearwater wastewater plant on Thursday, leading to millions of gallons of partially treated water flowing into Stevenson Creek.

On Friday, the city of Clearwater reported that about 11.1 million gallons of partially treated sewage flowed into the creek, and officials are advising people to stay out of the water for about a week.

"We’re dealing with the flow from the rain we got yesterday. We got like more than three inches of rain very quickly, and it caused the Marshall Street plant to have solids wash out due to the excessive flow," said Richard Gardner, the director of Clearwater Public Utilities.

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Gardner said what happened is called a "process upset," and the wastewater skipped the last of three filters it normally goes through at the plant.

"We tried to do what we could, added chemicals to make it settle better, increase the bleach that we feed for disinfection, but we still had to bypass the filters," said Gardner.

The city has three treatment districts, and the Marshall Street facility discharges into Stevenson Creek. Now, city officials are advising people to stay out of the water.

"I kayak a lot. There’s a lot of boaters that come up and down, a lot of jet skis," said Dan Garwood, who lives on the creek. "The wildlife’s amazing. The manatees and the dolphins, especially this time of year, the birds. So there’s a lot of activity to watch."

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Garwood, who has that waterfront view of the creek, said he has some concerns for the wildlife in the creek. He said he’s heard of something like this happening in the past.

"I think maybe once or twice it’s happened usually when it rains a lot. I know it rained quite a bit. I think I got five inches on the gauge," said Garwood. "I would think they’d try to do something to make it not happen as much, because especially if you know it rains a lot it’s going to happen. So you would think they’d maybe take steps."

The public utilities department is making changes ahead of more rain in the forecast in the coming days.

"We’ve increased the monitoring of the plant. We’ve made some changes, like we have a chemical that we can add that will help the settling polymer. We continue to reduce the solids, so there’s less solids that can possibly wash over," said Gardner.

They also have more equipment at the ready and operators watching for any unusual activity.

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"We’re testing it. It tastes a while to get the results back, but they should avoid it," said Gardner.

They also produce reclaimed water at the Marshall Street plant. Gardner said bypassing the filters when this incident happened didn’t produce high enough quality use for reclaimed water, so they took the Marshall Street system out of reclaimed water systems for that time.

Clearwater Public Utilities said they have people go out and test three areas along the creek and at the plant. They said the water only went from the plant into the creek during the temporary process upset, and it was reported to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

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