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Santa Paula Wastewater Plant |
Saturday Spill: Cleanup, repairs continue at wastewater treatment plant
October 31, 2015
By Peggy Kelly
Santa Paula News
Cleanup crews were on the scene of a spill of an unknown amount of partially processed sewage Saturday at the city’s wastewater plant reportedly created by a mechanical malfunction.
Initially the spill was reported at 850,000 gallons of raw sewage but Rick Conrad, a spokesman for PERC, which built and operates the plant, said “At this time,” the actual amount “is a fraction of that.”
The spill he added was “pretreated” sewage.
The incident occurred, “Late last night, early this morning,” when the pretreated sewage spilled for a still unconfirmed reason.
According to a witness the alarm that would trigger a response to the facility, located on the 900 block of Corporation Road at Calpipe Road, failed to activate.
It was only when someone was in the area of the wastewater treatment plant, which opened in late 2010 and just purchased by the city in April, that the spill was reported shortly after 8:15 a.m.
Santa Paula Fire was the first on scene and summoned Ventura County Hazardous Waste team. Ventura County Environmental Health and a representative from the agriculture commissioner’s office were among the agencies that responded.
The spill flowed into the street and according to a witness a portion of the pretreated sewage flowed to an organic farming area to the west of the facility.
“It was a mechanical issue,” that Conrad said a crew was still “evaluating to see what happened. There were no injuries, this was non-hazardous,” and no evacuation was ordered.
“The initial impacts are being evaluated,” but Conrad said the city sewer system, “was not impacted by the event, nothing went to the river or the PERC basin.”
He noted Patriot Environmental Services is handling the cleanup.
Interim Public Works Director Brian Yanez said at first the city thought the spill had resulted from a broken line and the mishap “flooded the facility,” inside while outside “The runoff went where it wanted to go down onto Calpipe Road there, that’s how we were notified.”
Public Works also responded with the SPFD: “We got staff down there and contained it so it did not enter the storm drain…they work really well together and always do a good job.”
The city summoned American Water and Ventura Regional Sanitation District to help remove the spill until Patriot, which has “those large tanks to handle these large amounts of spill,” took over.
“Our main thing right now,” Yanez said about 3 p.m. October 31, “is getting the plant up and operating…Patriot is helping with the effluent coming into the plant, storing it in tanks then it will be put back into the tanks,” at the facility for treatment.
Yanez said the fire department “calculated 850,000 gallons had spilled…they have a formula they use,” and although PERC is disputing the figure, “They haven’t given me an amount yet…”
Yanez noted the city has questions: “The system at the plant should have given a warning of what was going on, and when their staff found out we should have been notified. We will sit down with PERC and have a conversation.”
