Sending Sewage to a Brookings Beach

Back when sewage and storm water all simply went the same direction--downhill, there was no need to separate their ditches or piping.  That began changing as communities built sewage treatment plants and tried to keep high inflows from storms and snowmelt from overwhelming the system.  That was the motivation behind Portland's East & West Side Big Pipes.  From an article five years ago...

Nearly every time it rains in Portland, stormwater quickly fills the city's combined sewers, which carry both sanitary sewage and runoff from streets, parking lots and rooftops. The high volumes back up the collection system, triggering overflow devices that are meant to keep the sewers from backing up into the streets and people's homes. The volumes--made up of approximately 80 percent rainwater and 20 percent sewage--then overflow into the Willamette River. These combined sewer overflows contain bacteria from untreated sewage and other pollutants in the stormwater.

In new construction, sewage and storm drainage systems are kept separate...or at least they're supposed to be.  But sometimes contractors screw up, and occasionally they simply take short cuts to save money.  Not sure what was behind the following.

For the last 40 years, when students flushed the toilets in two restrooms at Kalmiopsis Elementary School the raw sewage went directly into nearby Macklyn Creek, which flows through the middle of Brookings.

And it's all because a contractor connected the wrong pipes in 1967.

"We didn't have a clue," Brookings-Harbor School District Superintendent John Garner said Monday.

The discovery also might solve the years-long mystery of what has been causing the high fecal bacteria counts and subsequent closing of Mill Beach, where Macklyn Creek meets the ocean.

The sewage would still be flowing into the creek today if Brookings contractor Dave Hoover, who is developing property across from the school on Fern Avenue, hadn't smelled the telltale odor coming out of a storm water pipe. Up until recently, the end of the pipe had been covered with vegetation.

Obviously, there could be other cross-connections, faulty septic tanks, etc. that are contributing to the closures and warnings at Mill Beach.  It will be interesting to see if conditions there show significant improvement.  

After some research, Garner was unable to determine who made the mistake back in 1967, but he found the district's insurance company at that time is still in business.

"I've been told by our current insurance company that there is no statute of limitations on insurance coverage in cases like this," Garner said. "I'm going to let the two insurance companies figure out who's going to pay for this."

He added, "If the district gets fined by the Environmental Protection Agency, then I will pass that on to the insurance companies, too."

That might not be so simple.  For instance if the city or county inspected the work before it was hidden (buried), is an insurance company actually on the hook?  Who was responsible for identifying the sewage line that the contractor was supposed to tap into.  Et cetera.  Hope they've got a really detailed inspector's log.