300,000 gallons of sewage released into SLO County river during storm
About 300,000 gallons of treated wastewater spilled into the Salinas River on Monday, according to the San Luis Obispo County Public Health Department.
Justin Black, the utility division manager for the Templeton Community Services District, said Thursday that the storm was unlike anything he’d seen in his career.
The storm dumped so much rain on the region that the Salinas River swelled beyond levels he knew possible, he told The Tribune Thursday.
The river had overflowed into the community services district’s wastewater percolation ponds near Highway 101 and Garcia Road by about 2:45 p.m. Monday, according to the public health department.
That overflow then took the wastewater in those ponds and carried it downstream through northern San Luis Obispo County and through Monterey County.
By about 5:45 p.m., the district was able to stop wastewater from continuing to flow into the percolation ponds, and instead diverted it into separate storage ponds.
The district will continue to divert the treated wastewater until it assesses the possible damage to the percolation ponds, Black said.
“The good news is that it was treated effluent,” Black said.
According to Black, the treated effluent has gone through all the necessary treatment stages required by the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board. It’s then sent to percolation ponds to seep into the ground and eventually the groundwater, he explained.
The Salinas River spill was the latest in a string of recent sewage spills on the Central Coast.
About 9,900 gallons of sewage overflowed from a manhole off the Embarcadero road and into the mouth of Morro Creek on Monday.
On Wednesday, San Luis Obispo County announced that the Rancho Guadalupe Dunes Preserve is closed for three miles around the mouth of the Santa Maria River due to an ongoing release of sewage from the Guadalupe wastewater treatment plant into the river.
The Public Health Department advises people to avoid contact with floodwater, ocean water, creeks and lakes for at least three days after a storm.
“Rainstorm runoff is known to transport high levels of disease-causing organisms such as bacteria, viruses and protozoa from the watershed and urban areas to the ocean,” the agency wrote in a news release Thursday. “Such organisms carried into the ocean can cause skin, respiratory, and intestinal problems.”
