Incident occurs as contractor performs maintenance on equipment
Approximately 24,000 gallons of raw sewage was diverted to the retention pond on the site of the Sarasota County Bee Ridge Water Reclamation Facility (WRF) on the morning of March 20 as a result of an abnormal event, county staff has notified the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP).
“All flow remained fully contained [on the site], with no public access and no impact to surrounding waterways,” the report pointed out. No sampling of water was required for public safety purposes, the report continued. Cleanup of the site and required notifications were “underway in accordance with established protocols,” the report added.
The Bee Ridge facility is the county’s largest wastewater treatment plant. Last year, county leaders celebrated the completion of a years-long process to convert the facility to the Advanced Wastewater Treatment status; its capacity also was expanded from 12 million gallons per day to 18 million gallons per day.
“This event is classified by FDEP as an abnormal event and not a spill, as it occurred within a controlled treatment facility environment,” the report to FDEP explained. “Regardless of classification, events of this nature are reported in accordance with regulatory requirements,” the report added.
The wastewater diversion happened as contractors were performing routine maintenance and repairs on what are known as the “headworks screens,” the report said.
JWC Environmental of Santa Ana, Calif., points out on its website, “The treatment of municipal sewage at any wastewater treatment plant all starts at the same place — at the headworks screens.”
The website adds, “It is critical to have some level of primary treatment protection at the headworks of a treatment plant. If the plant is fed from a combined sewer system there is the possibility tires, tree branches, lumber, or other heavy objects can damage downstream treatment equipment. Automatic bar screens, which screen out heavier debris utilizing closely spaced vertical bars, are one potential level of primary treatment protection.”
The incident began at 10 a.m. on March 20; it ceased at 10:05 a.m., the report noted.