NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 25, 2000
GREASE LEADS TO HOLIDAY SEWER SPILL
CARY, NC – While visions of sugarplums danced in the heads of many last night, a half dozen Town of Cary Public Works staffers looked for Santa in the night sky as they worked through Christmas Eve and into Christmas Day cleaning up a relatively small yet extremely stubborn sewer clog and spill.
About 2,412 gallons of untreated waste escaped from a manhole on St. Andrews Lane in MacGregor subdivision and ran into a dry weather ditch, with a small amount of the waste eventually making its way to MacGregor Lake. Fortunately, tests of the lake’s water show no ill effects or danger from the spill, and no fish kill has been observed.
Repair crews, who were called to the scene around 3:00 PM Sunday afternoon by an observant citizen, dislodged several rock-hard grease clogs from the line, installed a temporary dam to keep any more waste from traveling to the lake, limed and flushed the affected area, and pumped the waste back into the municipal system.
To decrease such incidents, the Town of Cary in 1998 established a Pretreatment Program designed to work with property owners to reduce the amount of fats, oils, and greases that are dumped each year into the municipal sewer system. While the program has thus far focused on commercial establishments since they produce a higher proportion of the problem, Town officials are working to educate all sewer customers on the dangers of dumping grease. Information about Cary’s Pretreatment Program can be found on the Town’s website,
www.townofcary.org.The Clean Water Act adopted last summer by the State Legislature requires a news release be issued by public works operators whenever a wastewater spill of 1,000 gallons or greater reaches surface waters.
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PRIMARY CONTACTS: |
Mike Bajorek, Public Works Division Director, 469-4090 |