Category: sewage spill

Interestinbg points in this letter to the editor of the Cumberland Times:

To the Editor:
Cumberland Times-News Cumberland Times-News Fri Sep 17, 2010, 08:00 AM EDT

— Three strikes in baseball means you’re out. Many worldwide religions regard the number three as having important significance.

Three times this year sewage has spilled into Deep Creek Lake.

The first sewage spill went largely unreported. Since there was never any official estimate given the only thing to work off of are estimates made by private home owners. Some of these are as high as 65,000 gallons.

The second spill was reported at first by the Cumberland Times-News with estimates of 45,000 gallons of raw sewage entering the lake. A recent spill was estimated at 6,400 gallons, even though the original estimate issued by the Deep Creek Lake POA was 9,000 gallons.

In one summer season it appears that over 116,400 gallons of raw sewage have entered Deep Creek Lake. This coincides with the largest fish kill ever reported in the lake watershed.

As a real estate agent and small business owner I, like many lake residents, depend on the lake’s recreational value to sustain small business growth.

More importantly, I look to Deep Creek Lake to provide our area with an important natural resource: both recreationally and ecologically.

Gorgeous migrating birds, (bald eagles and herons included) unique freshwater fish, and exciting freshwater mammals, (such as beavers) all make this resource and the surrounding streams their home.

On the recreational side, Deep Creek Lake has introduced countless visitors and residents alike to just how much fun and enjoyment Mother Nature can offer.

Though, as a citizen watching sewage literally run into our lake, I fear that those in the positions to maintain lake water quality have failed on multiple occasions.

Just as BP, Halliburton, and Trans Ocean failed to maintain an operational and secure oil well in the Gulf — the Garrett County commissioners and Department of Public Utilities Sanitation Division have failed to maintain a viable and safe sewage system at Deep Creek Lake.

This failure has threatened not only the health of the lake but public health as well.

To add insult to injury they failed not once, not twice, but a total of three times. In doing so, they have put many lake area businesses in jeopardy of large scale profit losses and endangered the health of local residents and visitors alike.

This goes without mentioning the tremendous toll these spills have taken on the lake’s aquatic life. To me this is unacceptable.

As residents and business owners we have two choices. We can quietly allude ourselves to the false pretense that everything is being done by our current elected officials to maintain lake quality and preserve our natural resources. Or we can face the stark reality that something needs to change.

As sewage fills Deep Creek Lake and wind turbines dot our once picturesque mountain landscape are we not forced to ask, have our elected officials kept the lake area and Western Maryland’s best interest at heart?

Perhaps we need to ask all elected county officials to exit their offices since new representatives have been chosen to hopefully make far better choices and offer much more efficient management of Western Maryland’s crown jewel, Deep Creek Lake.

Jeremy Gosnell

Oakland

If you are thinking of buying or selling real estate in Garrett County or Deep Creek Lake, Maryland, call Jay Ferguson of Railey Realty for all of your real estate needs! 877-563-5350

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Strings from cloth mop entangled part of pump, caused malfuction Sunday afternoon
Megan Miller
Cumberland Times-News Cumberland Times-News Wed Sep 08, 2010, 08:00 AM EDT

— OAKLAND — A sewage pump malfunction on Sunday in Garrett County resulted in a 6,400-gallon sewage spill near the shore of Deep Creek Lake.

The spill occurred in the area of 2739 Lake Shore Drive at about 3:10 p.m., when strings from a cloth mop entangled the pump’s float control device, according to Linda Lindsey, director of the Garrett County Department of Public Utilities. Because the float device was bound up, the pumps ran continuously until they overheated.

Sewage spilled across the ground and into a nearby stream that feeds into the lake.

“It basically saturated the ground, because the ground was so dry,” Lindsey said at Tuesday’s county commission meeting.

County officials were notified when an adjoining property owner heard an alarm at the station and called the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Management. That office paged the public utilities employee on duty, who went immediately to the scene of the spill.

Lindsey said the employee was able to correct the malfunction approximately nine minutes after receiving notification of the problem.

The ground was disinfected and the area cordoned off from the public. Buoys were set up to restrict traffic in that portion of the lake.

A public service announcement was broadcast on the radio Monday to notify the public of the hazard.

Water testing has been conducted daily since the spill and will continue until bacteria counts fall to acceptable levels, Lindsey said.

It’s the second major malfunction to result in a sewage overflow in as many months.

On July 11, an electrical malfunction at a pump station near the intersection of U.S. Route 219 and Lake Shore Drive caused 42,000 gallons of sewage to overflow along the shore of the lake.

In that incident, an electrical short prevented an emergency generator from supplying power to the pumps. The spill apparently occurred sometime before 7 a.m. and was reported by a neighboring property owner at approximately 9:45 a.m. County workers corrected the problem at the pump station by about 10 a.m.

Afterward, county officials committed to the installation of diesel-powered emergency backup pumps at three pump stations, including the two involved in the recent spills and another on the same line.

Those are the three pump stations that handle the majority of the system’s flow, Lindsey said.

Workers began installing the diesel pumps last week but were pulled away to repair water leaks elsewhere in the system. Lindsey said that had the diesel pump been online, Sunday’s spill would likely have been prevented.

She said her department tries to educate businesses and vacation rental companies about what materials can and cannot be flushed down the drain, but that doesn’t prevent all problems. Even towels and bedsheets have occasionally made their way through the system to bind up the pumps.

Contact Megan Miller at mmiller@times-news.com.

If you are thinking of buying or selling real estate in Garrett County or Deep Creek Lake, Maryland, call Jay Ferguson of Railey Realty for all of your real estate needs! 877-563-5350

Deep Creek Do It All specializes in cleaning services in Garrett County & @ Deep Creek Lake. Give them a call (301-501-0217) or visit the website – competitive rates and quality results from a locally owned & operated company!

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The Garrett County Department of Public Utilities (DPU) met last week with GC Board of Commissioners chair Ernie Gregg, county administrator Monty Pagenhardt, and representatives of the GC Health Department and Department of Planning and Land Development to assess a recent sewage overflow in the Deep Creek Lake Sewer System.

They provided the following details about the incident and future preventive measures in a press release:

DPU received an emergency pager call on July 11 at approximately 9:45 a.m. regarding an apparent sewage overflow at Pump Station 2-2, located at the intersection of Garrett Highway (Rt. 219) and Lake Shore Drive.

Upon arrival, DPU personnel spoke to a property owner who initiated the emergency call. The person informed the employee that another neighbor noticed the sewage around 7 a.m. but did not report the problem.

DPU personnel assessed and corrected the problem by approximately 10 a.m. and estimated the overflow volume to be approximately 42,000 gallons, based upon the gallons per minute the pump is capable of pumping and the number of cycles it would have pumped in a three-hour duration.

DPU notified the Department of Natural Resources’ (DNR) lake management office and informed personnel of the situation. DNR dispatched a vessel to the area and placed buoys on the water to restrict watercraft from entering the contaminated area. Caution tape was also placed across neighboring docks to the shoreline to restrict the area, and notices were posted in the vicinity.

The Garrett County Health Department’s Environmental Health Services office was also notified, and the incident was reported to the Maryland Department of the Environment’s emergency notification center.

DPU personnel utilized their vacuum/tank truck and removed standing sewage from the surrounding ground and disinfected the affected are. DPU laboratory personnel collected water samples from the contaminated lake area and commenced the analysis process.

Pump Station 2-2 consists of one large wet well containing two 40hp pumps. Wastewater enters the wet well from both the northern and southern sections of the sewer system. When the wastewater reaches a pre-set level, floats connected to the pump controls signal the pump to operate and discharge the wastewater from the wet well into the main sewer line flowing toward the wastewater treatment plant.

A bypass vault is also installed at this pump station, which contains a 30hp.

Following the cleanup process, DPU electricians assessed the components of the pump station in order to determine the cause. Their assessment revealed that an electrical short in the power cord connected to Pump No. 1 occurred.

This short caused the main breaker for the pump station’s electrical controls to trip instead of just the breaker serving Pump No. 1.

When the emergency generator tried to start, it detected a dead short in the system and shut down in order to prevent damage to the generator. If the generator had been able to run, Pump No. 2 and/or the bypass pump would have began operating, but because of the main breaker being rendered inoperable, neither Pump No. 2 nor the bypass pump could be energized, therefore causing the overflow.

In accordance with the Code of Maryland Regulations governing such occurrences, the area affected was posted, and within 24 hours, DPU notified the public with a public service announcement on a radio station serving the immediate area where the overflow occurred.

Additional lake water samples were collected and tested on July 12 and 13. Based on testing results for samples collected on July 13, Environmental Health Services lifted the restriction on entering the water in the affected area on July 14, and the appropriate public service announcement was issued on the local radio station.

The pump stations are currently equipped with indicator lights and an audible alarm system to provide warning of a malfunction.

Upon further review of the electrical malfunction and the risk of potential reoccurrences, DPU is pursuing the addition of either a telemetry or auto-dialer alarm system to supplement current notification components at all main line pump stations.

The department is also performing an assessment of the current electrical components to evaluate possible upgrades and/or replacements and, if required, will secure the services of an independent consultant.

DPU and the county commissioners have also committed to adding a second emergency backup, in addition to the emergency generator, for the pump station operations. Independent Godwin Dri-Prime diesel operated pumps will be purchased and installed at Pump Station 2-2 and several others.

This backup pump will operate and maintain flows if an electrical outage or malfunction of the electrical components or emergency generator occurs.

Read the article here.

If you are thinking of buying or selling real estate in Garrett County or Deep Creek Lake, Maryland, call Jay Ferguson of Railey Realty for all of your real estate needs! 877-563-5350

Deep Creek Do It All specializes in cleaning services in Garrett County & @ Deep Creek Lake. Give them a call (301-501-0217) or visit the website – competitive rates and quality results from a locally owned & operated company!