Rome work crews will be examining sewer lines to see how rainwater got into the system Tuesday and pushed an estimated 34,000 gallons of raw sewage into the Coosa River.
“We had a lot of rain in a short amount of time,” Water and Sewer Department Director Leigh Ross said Wednesday. “It made its way into the sanitary sewer system and took up all the capacity. When the intense rain stopped, the system was able to handle the normal flow.”
The biggest spill, 25,000 gallons, occurred at the Horseleg Creek lift station. Sewage ran into the river for an hour.
Approximately 8,000 gallons overflowed at Savannah Place, off Garden Lakes Parkway, into a tributary of the Coosa, and another 1,000 gallons ran into a tributary near Beech Creek subdivision.
Ross said workers will be looking for deteriorating joints or places where someone may have routed a drain to the sewer instead of the storm water system.
Fortunately, he said, the sewage that poured into the river was heavily diluted with rain and did not seriously affect the waterway.
Click here to see the Environmental Protection Division site to search for a complete list of Water Quality Control Act violations in Floyd County since June 15, 1998.
