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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.
