After the majority of these spills, the polluted water often wasn't even tested by county or state investigators, so no one can know for sure if dangerous levels of pathogens were present. A lot of people, including the EPA and many other experts, say this is a potentially dangerous public health risk. But the same people who don't test the water say it's not a big deal.
A lengthy investigation by Creative Loafing has revealed that the enforcement system which is supposed to protect us from these spills is little more than a dysfunctional bureaucratic mirage that stretches from the county environmental department to state environmental enforcement officials. This bureaucracy has created a system in which more emphasis is placed on how quickly spills are responded to than determining the extent of damage, or finding ways to prevent them.
At the center of it all is yet another government agency: Charlotte Mecklenburg Utilities (CMU) accounted for 99 percent of the volume of raw sewage spilled in Mecklenburg County. This is the agency that sends us our water bills and pumps more than 28.3 billion gallons of wastewater from our toilets to any of 65 sewage pump stations across the county through 3,062 miles of pipelines. And it's the agency that was responsible for about 10 percent of all sewage spills in North Carolina, spilling a whopping 12 million gallons of raw sewage in 815 separate incidents between fiscal years 1999 and 2001, according to North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (NCDENR) statistics provided to CL by NCDENR spokesperson Ernie Seneca.
Despite the size and scope of the spillage, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities did not receive a fine from the state for a single one of those spills. Yet over the period in which the utility's 815 spills took place, close to 2,000 fines -- about $4 million worth -- were levied by the state against other sewage polluters in other North Carolina counties, and occasionally against smaller, private sector polluters in this one.
Over and over again, evidence of massive spills in Mecklenburg County has crossed the desk of state Regional Water Quality Division Supervisor Rex Gleason in the NCDENR Mooresville office. Even when county investigation reports clearly indicated the possible presence of dangerous amounts of pathogenic bacteria in the county's waters, spill cases were closed by staff at either the state regional office or the county level with no fine -- even when the spill directly violated the state's collection system enforcement guidelines.
From your toilet to your backyard
Patrick Carrigan lives on Rittenhouse Circle off Sardis Road North. Carrigan called police in July 1999 because the creek that runs across his backyard -- and winds by or near the homes of over 100 Sardis Woods and Sardis Forest residents -- had turned milky gray and reeked of sewage.
"I noticed the smell for a couple of days before I went down there and saw what it was," said Carrigan. "One of my neighbors thought something had died under his porch. It was horribly filthy."
As soon as he turned off Sardis Road North, the police officer who responded to the call smelled the acrid stench. By the time an environmental hygienist from the county environmental department arrived on the scene, a sewer manhole near a tennis club upstream off Morning Dale Drive had already been overflowing for three days, causing a half-million gallon sewage spill. All night and throughout the next day, CMU crews flushed the stream with water, pushing the "slug" of sewage downstream through the neighborhood.
Worse yet, none of Carrigan's neighbors nor the folks living downstream were personally notified of what dangers lurked in their backyards. That's what makes Carrigan the angriest.
"Kids do play in it," said Carrigan. "I sure do wish they'd prevent that from happening."
The "they" Carrigan wants to protect his neighbors is actually a toothless, multi-tier bureaucracy. Mecklenburg is one of only two counties in the state authorized to do its own spill investigations. Back in 1986, the county signed a memorandum of agreement that said, among other things, that it would collect and document evidence of environmental damage after sewage spills, then forward the information to NCDENR's Mooresville Regional Office, where the spills are supposed to be scored and evaluated to see if the spillers merit a fine or other punishment. In most counties, that's normally done by state environmental investigators, but Mecklenburg was growing, and its environmental department, which is now called the Mecklenburg County Water Quality Program (MCWQP), was large enough to handle the job of investigating spills for the state.
One problem. No one ever clarified what evidence the county's environmental hygienists would collect, after which spills they would collect it, or what they would do with it. The level of communication is so bad, in fact, that most of the middle and lower level environmental staff members CL spoke to -- the folks on the ground investigating and documenting these spills -- were unaware of the existence, much less the importance of the enforcement guidelines that are supposed to govern the job they perform. That creates a situation akin to traffic cops being asked to do their jobs without ever having learned state driving laws.
John McCulloch, one of three water quality supervisors at MCWQP, said he was unfamiliar with the water quality guidelines when asked about them by CL. Without a working knowledge of the guidelines which the county has agreed to help the state enforce, county environmental hygienists investigating these spills wouldn't know what evidence would be needed to recommend a fine for a spiller, or the importance of documenting the damage done by the spills.
How it's supposed to work
Spill analysis is simple enough that your average sixth grader could learn to do it. One of the surest signs that a large sewage spill has overwhelmed the waters it flows through is a lowered level of dissolved oxygen in the water.
Low levels of dissolved oxygen can indicate the presence of significant amounts of fecal coliform bacteria, which is host to the dangerous pathogens that travel in feces. If a water test indicates less than 5.0 mg/liter of dissolved oxygen -- as it did in the case of the Morning Dale Drive spill that ran through Patrick Carrigan's backyard -- it indicates the need for a fecal coliform test. Without one, there's no way to tell how much bacteria might be in the water. Water with large amounts of fecal coliform in it -- more than 200 colonies per 100 milliliters of water -- is considered unsafe for swimming and is not recommended for human contact.
A downstream water test, taken by county environmental hygienists the day after the Morning Dale Drive spill, showed that the dissolved oxygen level in McAlpine Creek violated state water quality standards for dissolved oxygen. A fecal test could have told investigators, and ultimately surrounding residents, just how unsafe that water was. But, as in the case of nearly all the big spills CL has analyzed, no fecal test was conducted, and the dissolved oxygen violation recorded by the county environmentalist brought about no fine, and no further attention.
And that's where the problem lies. While county environmental officials are required to collect data to document that a spill has occurred, and make the case for a fine or other punishment, the state doesn't require that MCWQP actually perform any particular test on fouled streams and creeks, or any tests at all for that matter. Of course, how they would be able to document that a spill has occurred and make the case for a fine without testing the water is a mystery. Although MCWQP isn't required by the state to test the water, it seems a reasonable expectation that the organization specifically paid by the county to oversee our water quality would take it upon itself to test the water after sewage spills. In deciding not to collect evidence, the county fails to do its enforcement job and lets polluters off the hook.
While it is not MCWQP's job to issue violation notices -- that falls to the state -- it is the county department's job to track what happens to their reports and forward them to NCDENR's regional office with a letter or other notice reporting water quality damage and suggesting a fine.
When CL interviewed him, Rusty Rozzelle, program manager for water quality with MCWQP, wasn't sure what had happened after his department wrote up the spill report on the Morning Dale Drive spill.
"I don't know whether any report followed regarding notice of violation," said Rozzelle. "If it was not noted in this report, there must not have been any notice of violation issued."
Rozzelle said that ultimately, the decision on whether water quality enforcers will test after a spill is up to Regional Water Quality Division Supervisor Rex Gleason in the NCDENR Mooresville office. But the enforcement agreement between the state and the county reads differently. It plainly says that MCWQP is responsible for collecting necessary evidence for legal action against the spillers and forwarding it to the state.
So if the spillers aren't required to test the water and the enforcers aren't doing it, then how does anyone know what the heck is going on?
They don't, says frustrated Catawba Riverkeeper Donna Lisenby, who likens the whole situation to the police working together with perpetrators of a crime in an effort not to collect evidence.
"An environmental crime is like any other crime," says Lisenby. "You have to gather evidence to prove it occurred and who was responsible. If the state fails to collect evidence, then the polluters will get away with the crime every time. It's like a shoplifter being required to prove that they stole something."
After our interviews with Rozzelle and other enforcement officials, CL remained uncertain what, if any, purpose the county department serves when it comes to monitoring spills.
What is clear, though, is that both the enforcers and the spillers seem to operate on a sort of "professional judgment" honor system that bears little resemblance to state enforcement guidelines. But then, as staff members at all levels of the system have repeatedly reminded CL, they are just guidelines, not laws.
Rozzelle says MCWQP only conducts fecal tests to confirm that there has been a spill, or if a sewage spill reaches a lake or river since those are swimming areas. Of course, how MCWQP would know a spill didn't reach a lake or a swimming area via a creek or stream without conducting water quality tests is uncertain.
Part of the problem here is that the way state guidelines are written allows enforcers so much leeway that 815 spills by CMU over three years went unfined. The guidelines, which are fairly simple, were revamped in 1999 to put more emphasis on the speed with which local authorities respond to a spill and report it to NCDENR regional offices. Essentially, the spiller must report the spill to state authorities within 24 hours of the time they learn of its existence or they'll receive a fine of at least $4,000. They then have five business days to turn in a written report about how they responded to the spill or they'll get a minimum $500 more in fines.
How well the spillers respond to a spill is supposed to be scored on a points system, and the final score is supposed to determine whether they get a fine. But CL could only find one instance in which the point system had actually been used by anyone in the NCDENR regional office to score a spill. Even if it were regularly used, the system is so heavily weighted toward how quickly spillers respond to the spill that if they simply show up rapidly and have their report in on time, it doesn't seem to matter how much damage the spill has caused, how large it was, or how many other spills preceded it.
"Volume doesn't dictate the fine," says Seneca. "They may have a major discharge, but they may have done all the things they are supposed to do."
Even if the spillers do everything they are supposed to do according to the state's guidelines, the sewage system permit holder is still supposed to be held liable for "damage" to the waters. Damage is defined as a fish kill or benthic, amphibian or crustacean kill; a violation of water quality standards based on upstream and downstream data taken at the time of the spill; or a negative impact on surface water in which it becomes so polluted that it can't be used for its intended purpose, like swimming. If damage to waters is found after a spill, the spiller or permit holder is supposed to pay for fish replacement costs and the costs of the investigation, regardless of how quickly they responded to the spill.
This second part of the guidelines -- the part that actually holds spillers accountable -- appears to have been largely ignored by state enforcers. And again, if the county's investigators aren't required to conduct water quality tests, it is difficult to prove that any damage was done anyway.
Although CMU accounts for nearly all the county's sewage spills in terms of volume, some smaller, private companies also foul the waters. These companies, who have less experience than CMU in navigating the system, have ended up with $10,000 fines for small spills that did little damage, but to which they did not respond quickly. Repeat spillers like CMU have figured out that it's easier to get to a spill quickly and fill out the proper paperwork than it is to make the multi-million dollar repairs and upgrades to their system that would help prevent the spills. Obviously, it works for them as they've yet to be fined.
The other problem with the points system is that it is weighted heavily toward repeat violators who have previously been fined. But unless the state actually fines someone for the previous spills, which it hasn't, they don't count against them when enforcers total up negative points for a current spill. Take what happened at Long Creek pump station in the western part of the county, for instance. Between 1997 and 1999, there were 14 spills totaling 1.1 million gallons of raw sewage from the area around the Long Creek pump station. Because the state didn't fine them for any of these spills, when 3.7 million more gallons were spilled from there into Lake Wylie in 2000, that spill, one of the biggest in the state that year, didn't garner enough negative points to warrant a fine, although CMU's Long Creek pump station had a long, sordid history of sewage spills.
For Lisenby, the Catawba Riverkeeper, the state of the enforcement system can be summed up in three words.
"It's a joke," she says.
It's official: playing in raw sewage
is OK for kids
County health officials, county environmental staff, and utility representatives tell CL that the seriousness of the situation isn't what it would appear. Sewage spills aren't as dangerous to the public as they may seem, they say.
CMU spokesperson Vic Simpson says that nature cleans up spills to creeks and lakes because the moving water quickly dilutes and disperses the human waste.
"Typically, it is not something that causes a public health threat," says Simpson. "How often do people have direct contact around sewer lines anyway?"
Quite often, says UNCC biology professor James Oliver, the director of the biotechnology program at the university. Flushing the creek, as CMU did after the Morning Dale Drive spill, helps to dilute the bacteria and pollutants, but it won't kill the bacteria, and may merely push it downstream, Oliver says.
"It is still going to be there," Oliver said. "It gets into the grass and dirt. It is not just going to wash away. It seems that there should be some notification, and rapid notification, to the people around the spill."
Oliver said that in cases like these, the state policy of informing the public with a press release sent to the media -- information that most of the time isn't reported because there are so many spills -- is not adequate.
Dr. Stephen Keener is the medical director for the county health department, which sometimes consults with MCWQP (which, of course, is also a county agency) on more serious spills. Like Simpson, Keener says he isn't particularly worried about the health impact of the spills.
"These spills are a concern, but not a major one," said Keener. "I don't think anyone would want to stay around the creek (after a spill). It stinks. It is not a problem to get in and wade in it. An open cut would not be a concern. You have to actually ingest the water to cause a disease. If we had a goal of surface creeks and streams clean enough to drink from, then obviously it would be a bad thing if our community depended on this water for drinking, but we don't. It is aesthetically undesirable, but it is not a health threat in our community."
"It is too," says Barney Kane, a professor of environmental health at East Carolina State University. "Ask him if he would get in and wade in it. It is somewhat stunning that the health director is not more concerned. Why do they insist that pools be chlorinated? Duh."
Kane would know. While working in a shellfish sanitation public health program in Florida, he contracted bacillary dysentery (shigellosis) from incidental contact with the waters of Scipio Creek, which received the poorly treated wastewater from Apalachicola.
"Children who play in a stream overtly contaminated with raw sewage are at elevated risk of disease," said Kane. "If they are found doing so, they should wash themselves thoroughly with soap and water. Simply sucking on one's thumb after dipping it in such water could result in disease."
Joel Hansel, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)'s regional expert for human health criterion, agrees.
"Recreating in a creek with raw sewage would not be one of the things that you'd want to do to find out what would happen," said Hansel. "If it has been dry and hot and doesn't smell bad or look bad, kids will go in it without knowing it is there. It's an issue when the spill goes on this long as far as human health implications."
If there's any doubt left that nearly everyone besides city and county officials thinks raw sewage is a health threat when it is spilled into creeks and streams, there's a plethora of well-documented tests and studies to prove the point.
County officials argue that because creeks and streams aren't designated swimming areas, they don't pose the threat or warrant the caution that spills into lakes and rivers do.
It has been known since 1977, when the first study on the subject was printed in Water Science & Technology, that even the spray from polluted water containing pathogenic bacteria and viruses could penetrate the respiratory system, even if the subject had no contact with the water. Another study, published in Water Science & Technology in 1995, showed that young children are particularly at risk for bacterial skin infections from skin scrapes and abrasions due to the tenderness of their skin and therefore have a greater chance of contracting infection in polluted or sewage filled waters (see "Diseases and Parasites You Can Get From Raw Sewage" sidebar).
Of course, say experts, just how dangerous the water is depends on how much pathogenic material is likely to be concentrated in it, and the only indicator for that is a fecal coliform test, which CMU and MCWQP rarely have been known to perform after a spill.
The haphazard way in which decisions are made about whether to test water after spills is demonstrated by a November 1999 case. After a bubbler system failure at the McDowell Creek wastewater treatment plant, a mechanical switching system failed to turn on an alarm. The result was a 159,000-gallon spill into Clark's Creek off Ramah Church Road. The creek winds through several subdivisions and residential areas. According to MCWQP's own reports, the environmental hygienist who investigated the spill observed that the sewage-filled creek was milky and turbid in appearance eight miles away from the spill where the creek crosses Huntersville-Concord Road, and 20 miles away at Eastfield Road. Yet MCWQP never bothered to conduct water tests on the creek or warn the residents. The MCWQP report makes no mention of any efforts by CMU to clean up the spill. The case was closed, according to the service request by MCWQP, after the MCWQP personnel investigating the matter discussed it with other officials.
Ironically, considering that county enforcers didn't bother to do them, water quality tests were conducted by the utility itself after this spill, even though they weren't required. CL obtained a copy of the tests, which reveal that the dissolved oxygen levels in the water after the spill violated state standards, and should have indicated the need for a fecal coliform test. Of course, since CMU isn't required to share the results of their tests with anyone, MCWQP simply closed that case, even though "damage," as defined in the state's collection system enforcement guidelines, had likely occurred.
Rusty Rozzelle, the program manager for water quality with MCWQP, acknowledged that CMU sometimes shared the results of its water quality test with the county water quality enforcers after a sewage spill, but that sometimes the test results "don't get in the file and they don't get processed."
While CMU has been slow to replace aging infrastructure, the utility has, of late, done a better job maintaining its lines and doing preventive maintenance. In 2001, the utility cleaned 918 of its 3,062 miles of sewer lines, which helps prevent clogging, and restored and replaced 32 miles of lines. Inspectors with a year-old CMU program targeting oils and grease that can clog the system monitored 1,206 restaurants to make sure they weren't improperly disposing of grease.
South Carolina to the rescue
Had the 215,800 gallons of sewage spilled into Steele Creek in June 2001 not traveled downstream across the state line into South Carolina, NC water quality enforcement officials probably could have brushed this spill off, too. But for once, it wasn't to be that easy.
Unlike all the other spills described above, this time investigators with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources were downstream to test the water and document the full extent of the destruction wreaked upon the creek by the spill.
The spill left 3.5 miles of dead stream -- from the state line to Gold Hill Road in South Carolina -- in which all or nearly all of the aquatic life was devastated. SC authorities estimated that more than 1,209 fish were killed.
Because North Carolina officials neglected to notify South Carolina officials about the spill for a couple of days due to a communications glitch, the sewage had time to wind its way through a park and at least one subdivision.
Bridget Tkacik, a mother of three, notified South Carolina enforcement officials of the spill after she noticed dozens of dead fish floating in the creek in the backyard of her home in Fort Mill's Bailywick subdivision.
As soon as Catawba Riverkeeper Donna Lisenby realized what was going on, she sprang into action, driving down to Anne Springs Close Greenway in Fort Mill to warn mothers with caravans full of children playing in and near Steele Creek that the kids needed to get out immediately and may already be at risk for infection.
Tkacik says the attitude of enforcement officials from both states frustrated her.
"All I really got out of them was, 'I wouldn't put my foot in that creek,'" said Tkacik. "Everyone's attitude was, 'We tested it, the fish died, tough luck.' If this creek dies, we may lose all our green space and the wildlife we have. Every Spring, it was a ritual to go out and gather the tadpoles. We also lost a great blue heron that used to fish in our backyard and the fish have not returned."
Tkacik is particularly perturbed that North and South Carolina laws don't require that neighborhood residents and parkgoers be notified of large sewage spills into creeks and streams since the water is not considered "recreational," or water that is used for swimming.
"You can't keep a little boy out of the creek," she says, referring to her eight-year-old son. "My kids like to cross the creek."
Other Fort Mill moms agreed. Some 40 people showed up at a meeting put together by Lisenby to question North and South Carolina officials about the spill and demand that a fine be levied and that they be notified of future spills. At least four media outlets ran high-profile stories on the spill and the ensuing controversy. This time, a fine was levied: $10,400 to be paid by three realty and construction companies that had caused the spill. CMU, although it was roundly criticized for the delay in communication with South Carolina officials and for not testing adequately, did not receive a fine.
The added publicity helped the fine process along, says Lisenby, but the clincher was that this time, there was also detailed water quality sampling to prove the extent of the damage of the spill.
Water testing by the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) showed fecal coliform levels 55 to 65 times higher than those considered safe for human contact with the water. The test proved beyond a doubt that the spill violated both North and South Carolina water quality laws. Without the fecal test, the Fort Mill folks would have been out of luck because, as has been the case in so many big spills in Mecklenburg County, there would be no evidence of damage to the creek besides the fish kill.
MCWQP Water Quality Supervisor John McCulloch explains the lack of fecal testing the way most North Carolina investigators and enforcers do.
"There's no point in doing a fecal test if you already know there's sewage in the creek," said McCullough. "The counts would be sky high."
The problem with that attitude, says Lisenby, is that without documentation of the sky-high fecal counts, there's not enough evidence of an environmental crime to fine the polluters. And there's ultimately no way to assess how dangerous the creek water running behind your home really is after a spill.
Whether investigators collect evidence is one issue, says Lisenby. How thorough they are is another. There is a stark contrast between the extent to which South Carolina environmental officials go to investigate a spill and the efforts made in Mecklenburg County.
Take fish kills, for instance. To investigators, a fish kill and its relative size is one of the key indicators of the seriousness of a spill. But dead fish don't always cooperate by neatly displaying themselves for inspection along the shore. Oftentimes, they sink. To get an accurate indication of a fish kill, you've got to get in the stream and drag the bottom, and that's exactly what South Carolina officials did. They strapped on hip waders and dragged the stream with nets. The result was over 1,000 dead fish.
When thorough research isn't done, the number of dead fish reported plummets. In the case of the 3.7 million gallon spill at Long Creek, the water wasn't dragged. Instead, county investigators counted the number of fish on a single creek bank and reported a fish kill of 16. A similar thing happened with the Morning Dale Drive spill, which, at a half-million gallons, was twice the size of the Steele Creek spill. Only 20 dead fish were reported.
Working at cross purposes
Most of the sewage you just read about eventually ends up in the Catawba River Basin. According to the American Rivers Most Endangered Rivers report for 2001, the Catawba River was listed as the 13th most endangered river in the US. The four main threats to the river listed by the group were land development, sewage discharges and spills and water withdrawals.
In its annual work plan, which it submits to the state, county environmental officials at MCWQP acknowledged that yearly water quality monitoring data from 1998 through 2000 revealed high fecal coliform counts downstream of sewer leaks and other areas from which sewage has been legally or illegally discharged. That's not all sewage spill related, but some of it is. This is particularly ironic when you consider that the county has spent tens of millions of dollars on a surface water improvement program aimed at preserving natural buffers and improving the quality of the water in the county's creeks and streams, while at the same time often turning a blind eye to the sewage spills that have caused some of the pollution the county is trying to combat. *
