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County Says No Raw Sewage In Middle Lake

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By PAUL CATALA The Sun

The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 31, 2008

The leak has been repaired, the lines reburied and the water and traffic are flowing again.

And for residents in one Sun City Center neighborhood, the news gets better: test results showed no raw sewage spilled into Middle Lake, a 5-acre, manmade retention pond excavated for the community.

Final lab results on water samples taken from a Sun City Center retention pond show that raw sewage was not being pumped into the drainage system during repair work on a leaking pipeline last month.

Hillsborough County Water Resource Services conducted the tests after residents expressed concern about the groundwater being pumped from the repair site on Del Webb Boulevard the weekend before Thanksgiving.

Nov. 23, a leak in a 12-inch gravity sewage line, buried 17 feet deep, had been detected while the county did an assessment on the line.

While repairs were being made and the damaged pipe was being excavated, well points were installed to dry out the ground, said Michelle Van Dyke, community relations coordinator for Hillsborough County Water Resource Services. The pumped groundwater was funneled into a nearby stormwater drainage system, which empties into Middle Lake.

Because residents were concerned, crews redirected the flow to a nearby manhole, took samples of the water at the wellpoints and at various locations around the pond, and posted signs cautioning residents to avoid contact with the pond water.
Van Dyke said after samples taken on three different dates were analyzed, final lab results this week showed that raw sewage had not gotten into the retention pond.

Jeff Sklut, an environmental specialist with the Environmental Protection Commission (EPC) said the only bacteria or toxin levels found - nitrogen, phosphorous and ammonia, for example - were what would be expected in a retention-processing system and not the levels that would be found in raw sewage.

"For the time being, there should be no concern," he said. "We've cleared the complaint. Sample results by the county indicate no high levels of fecal coli form bacteria."

Results initially showed elevated levels of bacteria present at the line wellpoints, but the levels were much lower in the pond water.

Since the sample results are in, Van Dyke said Water Resource Services would take out caution signs around the lake and additional repair work on other sections of pipeline in the neighborhood is under way.

However, Dave Brown, a resident on Burlington Circle near the initial break, is still concerned the excavation of 17 feet to where the break occurred caused untreated sewage water to flow into Middle Lake. Water from the lake is used for lawn irrigation and he was concerned some of that could end up in lawns.

Brown said even though the results are finalized and the complaint closed, it probably shouldn't be. He said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set 200 coloform bacteria per 100 milliliters as the water-quality standard.

From the spreadsheet provided by the county, Brown said the count was 1,500 -- over that number during the excavation Nov. 24.

Brown said the sample was taken within an hour of when they stopped pumping ground-sewage water into the lake when the reading was only 10. He said the reading two days later had increased 450 percent to 45.

"These numbers just don't look right to me. I'm wondering if the Monday morning, the 24th, reading should have been 1000, and maybe they made a clerical error," said Brown, the 2008 Hillsborough County Moral Courage Award winner for his community activism.

"Ten just doesn't make any sense at all. And if 10 was truthful, why has it increased and remained high? I think Water Resource Services is trying to sweep this under the carpet with their strange lab results from Nov. 24. And remember, that 10 is the number that they put forward, not I."

In any case, Water Resource Services officials consider the problem resolved and gave credit to an ongoing pipeline assessment program with detecting the leaking line, allowing the department to fix the problem early on.

"The contractor's actions enabled us to take action quickly," said WRS Director Paul Vanderploog. "If they hadn't alerted us about the pipe's condition, a catastrophic event could have taken place."

Reporter Paul Catala can be reached at (813) 865-1554 or pcatala@mediageneral.com.

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