One Million Gallons of Untreated Wastewater Spilled in Charlotte County

A million gallons of untreated wastewater spilled in a Southwest Florida county, in the middle of crews working to improve the area’s sewage system.

The Charlotte County Utilities Director says that when crews worked on a new sewage system, they noticed pressures in their pipe system looked wrong. When they did shut things down, built-up pressure caused a pipe to rupture, which lead to a massive spill.

That huge multi-million dollar project is underway to bring sewage flows into this wastewater reclamation facility more quickly and with less pressure.

Craig Rudy is the Utilities Director for Charlotte County Utilities. “We need to do it, you know, complete this $22 million, five-year project,” Rudy said.

But, while cutting over older pipes to add to the newer system, an unknown valve was shut, building up pressure and leading to rupture that spilled about one million gallons of sewage.

“It was all contained in a swale. We actually had emergency tankers out there pumping it up and sucking it up and taking it to the plant,” said Rudy.

Although a majority of the spill was vacuumed up, almost 200,000 gallons ended up in the soil.