Wastewater spill not expected to have lasting impact

Comment:  Do they get fined for dumping poo water into the rivers?  Look out Danville, pooh has reached your water supply!  Later, it may be uranium pooh from the proposed uranium mill rumor to be located at Berry Hill!

By LATALA PAYNE
Staff writer
Published: January 31, 2010

The Eden Public Works Department reported a wastewater spill of an estimated 22,181 gallons on Jan. 25.

The untreated wastewater spilled into the Dan River and the Roanoke River Basin. Spills were reported at four pump stations: Covenant Branch, Meadow Greens, New Street and the village pump station.

Bill Harvey, collection and distribution superintendent for Eden’s environmental services, said the wastewater spill didn’t have a major affect on the river.

“With all the rain and the amount of volume of the river, it probably didn’t affect it – very little, if any,” Harvey said. “When you consider runoff from farms and everything else that’s washed in there, it won’t cause that many problems.”

Katherine Mull, executive director of the Dan River Basin Association, said the river will be healthy again in a short amount of time.

“In these situations, there is a high concentration of bacteria for a while, and then they tend to die off rather quickly,” Mull said. “As long as it’s not an ongoing thing, there’s really not much to worry about.”

Harvey said the problem should clear up pretty quickly, since the water is already receding and the overflows have stopped.

The announcement came as a response to House Bill 1160, which passed in 1999. It requires industries, municipalities and other operations which operate waste handling systems to issue a release when a wastewater spill of 1,000 gallons or more reaches surface water.

Read more:
http://www2.godanriver.com/gdr/news/local/rockingham_news/article/wastewater_spill_not_expected_to_have_lasting_impact/17558/