Sewage spill at CMC dumps 33,000 gallons of wastewater — and a SLO creek was impacted
Thousands of gallons of partially treated wastewater was released from California Men’s Colony into Chorro Creek Thursday morning, the San Luis Obispo County Public Health department said Thursday afternoon.
Approximately 33,000 gallons of wastewater were released from the prison north of San Luis Obispo around 10:13 a.m., a news release said.
“There was an approximate 12- to 15-minute unintentional discharge of treated, nearly purified water into Chorro Creek,” Lt. John Hill, public information officer at California Men’s Colony, wrote in an email Friday.
Public Health advises staying out of Chorro Creek and the body of water it feeds into, the Morro Bay National Estuary.
The department said the sewage is unlikely to harm anyone because county personnel oversaw cleaning of the areas, and Chorro Creek is difficult for the public to access except in the vicinity of the estuary, the release said.
Signs have been posted in areas impacted by the sewage spill. Representatives from the county Environmental Health department are on scene to “assure appropriate measures were taken to properly clean and sanitize the area,” Public Health said.
According to Hill, “an electrical fluctuation” at the prison’s wastewater treatment plant caused a mechanical malfunction, which in turn caused the ultraviolent system to lose power.
“Therefore the sewage was treated to secondary standards but failed to go through the final UV treatment process,” the Public Health release said.
“The discharged wastewater only lacked UV radiation bombardment as a final stage of purification, and was not like raw sewage in any form,” Hill wrote.
Whether any laws were violated will be determined by the Regional Water Quality Control Board.
There have been at least two sewage spills originating from the prison since 2015, according to Tribune archives.
In December 2015, a spill originating from a CMC sewer line on property owned by Camp San Luis Obispo spilled roughly 72,000 gallons of raw sewage, an unknown amount of which flowed into Chorro Creek.
Officials said at the time blamed the spill on inmates throwing trash into prison toilets.
In January 2017, a smaller spill of about 2,000-gallon spill seeped into a CMC storm drain and also affected the creek.
Correction: An earlier version of this story had incomplete information about the nature and scope of the sewage spill. The story has been corrected.
This story was originally published November 14, 2019 at 2:44 PM.
