07-09-06: With Help of River, City Likely Dodged A Bullet

With help of river, city likely dodged a bullet

When a broken sewer pipe in Cary spilled an estimated 7.9 million gallons of raw sewage and forced the closure of two popular lakes in the Triangle in June, Wilmington officials probably thought it was somebody else's turn to have a lousy summer.

Then a contractor pierced the sewer main serving the city's Southside wastewater treatment plant, causing a massive spill in the Port City for the second straight Independence Day holiday.

Three days and an estimated 5 million gallons of spilled wastewater later, officials are nailing down who is to blame for the spill. They're also trying to determine what the environmental consequences will be of dumping the equivalent of about 50,000 bathtubs of untreated sewage into the river.

But while the blame game over why the sewer line was breached is in full swing, almost everyone is in agreement about the answer to the latter issue.

In short, Wilmington caught a break.

"If you had to pick a body of water to dump more than 2 million gallons of raw sewage into, the Cape Fear River would be it," said Larry Cahoon, a marine biologist with the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Unlike Hewletts Creek, which has been the victim of several massive spills in the past 12 months, the Cape Fear River is a large, tidal, fast-flowing body of water. That should help dissipate the sewage faster.

The city was also fortunate that the spill occurred in an industrial area away from most homes, people and pets and washed into an area already closed to shellfishing, Cahoon added.

But that doesn't mean the spill hasn't or won't create problems.

Tracy Skrabal, senior scientist with the N.C. Coastal Federation, said there's no such thing as a "lucky" sewer spill.

"There will be consequences," she said, ticking off potential problems onshore and in the water. "No spill of this size is insignificant.

Whether measured in days, weeks or months, there will be impacts."

Mike Mallin, a water quality expert with UNCW, said the Cape Fear River is already considered an impaired waterway because of low dissolved oxygen levels, which can make it difficult for marine life to survive.

"Dumping more stuff in there, even unintentionally, is just going to make it worse," he said.

Mallin added that tests on surface water samples taken Thursday near the spill site showed bacteria levels at six times the federal and state safe swimming standard.

"And our experience from the Hewletts Creek spills is that the bacteria is a lot more numerous in the sediment than in the water column," Mallin said.

Among the organisms found in untreated sewage are protozoans, particularly nasty pathogens that can cause serious gastrointestinal problems in mammals.

"The risk of exposure is very, very low," Cahoon said. "But this is why we don't like sewage spills anywhere, anytime."

Both Mallin and Cahoon said they recommend people - and their pets - avoid wading in the river near the spill site, and thereby stirring up the sediment back into the water column, for several weeks.

State environmental health officials said they intend to keep the swimming advisory in effect for the Cape Fear River down to Snows Cut into next week, when further water sampling will determine if it can be lifted.

Skip Fry owns the Wilmington Marine Center, which sits along the Cape Fear River a mile south of the state port.

He said the spill didn't have a noticeable impact on his marina business over the Fourth of July.

"Most people knew about it, but didn't put us on the spot about it," Fry said.

But he said the long-term consequences from the spill, both economically and from a public relations point of view, could be harder to measure - especially coming on top of last year's sewer woes.

"I think we're all just disappointed," Fry said. "It sort of paints us all poorly."

Gareth McGrath: 343-2384
gareth.mcgrath@starnewsonline.com