Council authorizes $50,000 to remediate sewer overflow

The City Council met in special session late this afternoon and authorized the city manager to spend up to $50,000 to remediate a sewage spill that resulted in a "large" fish kill in Bunton Branch, a creek near Lehman High School. It is believed the spill may be confined to one person’s private property and the city stressed that absolutely no drinking water was affected by the incident.

The spill was apparently caused when Thursday morning’s storms knocked out the power to a lift station near Bunton Branch, causing the sewage to back up and overflow out of the pump.

City ordinances require any expenditure by the city in excess of $15,000 must be approved by the Council. Today’s council vote was unanimous.

The $50,000 does not include funds needed to pay the automatic fine TCEQ will levy some months down the road. City Manager Scott Sellers did remind the Council systems are being installed to prevent similar spills in the future.

Sellers told the council he only learned of the overflow at the Southlake lift station earlier this afternoon. He said normally crews check the lift station daily but did not do so Thursday because "we were involved in another project." However, the overflow was spotted during Friday’s inspection.

"It’s still too early for us to know exactly how the failure occurred," Sellers told the Council. "Our initial assumption is that the storm that occurred Thursday morning that was very violent had knocked out the power to the pumps in that lift station. There is a generator there, but that generator also did not have power. When power was restored to the lift station it did begin working so there is a question about how much sewage actually overflowed the lift station and into the Bunton Branch."

The lift station is located about 500 feet beyond the cul-de-sac at the end of Spillway Drive in East Kyle. Bunton Branch flows from the reservoir northwest of the lift station into Plum Creek. Sellers estimated the sewage traveled 20 yards from the lift station to Bunton Branch.

"It is unknown the quantity of sewage that entered the Bunton Branch," Sellers said. "We do know there was a fish kill in the creek. The number of fish is unknown at this time. TCEQ was immediately notified and arrived on the scene probably an hour and a half ago." (Approximately 3:30 p.m.)

"Texas Parks and Wildlife was also notified," Sellers continued. "They’ve asked whether we could preserve a couple of fish so they could do an analysis of those fish next week.

"We don’t know how extensive the spill is at this point," Sellers cautioned. "We hope it’s localized to just that area of the Bunton Branch."

Sellers added "plenty of live fish" were spotted in Bunton Branch along with the dead ones so TCEQ advised the city not to drain the area "but to seek more of a dilution remedy."

"So once we remove the fish kill we will begin to add fresh water to the stream," Sellers said. "We will also remove the dirty water. The way to do this is to connect high-powered pumps and we have two six-inch pumps that can pull trash through them. We have hard surface lines back up to the lift station itself and we will drain back into that lift station. It has to be a controlled drain because too much too fast would create a surge down the line that could possibly upset the (wastewater) plant. So we are estimating it will take us somewhere between 10 and 14 days to halfway drain that creek to TCEQ’s satisfaction. At which point we will introduce more fresh water to ensure we have cleaned it up well."

Sellers said he did not know exactly how much the cleanup would cost, but he estimated it would be between $20,000 and $30,000. The council agreed to cap the expenditures, for now, at $50,000 in case of unforseen problems that could occur in the process between now and the next regularly scheduled City Council meeting April 5, 12 days from today. One of those problems could arise if it is discovered the spill extends beyond Goforth Road, which would result in the need to employ highly expensive pump trucks to vacuum that section of Bunton Branch.

Sellers reminded the council that this year’s budget included costs for a SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) system for remote monitoring and control that operates with coded signals over communication channels. SCADA systems are commonly used by municipalities to exert industrial computerized control over wastewater systems as well as other similar infrastructure.

"It is a way we can monitor via phone the status of those lift stations," Sellers said. "We can monitor the flow. We can monitor whether the power is going to those lift stations."

If power is cut off, Sellers said, that triggers a phone call to city officials notifying them of that loss of power. He said the current budget may not contain all the necessary funds to cover SCADA for all the lift stations, but that he will know more once the city has received the bids it has requested for installing the system.

Sellers said the TCEQ’s fine is usually higher when a fish kill is involved and it also depends on the amount of sewage that overflowed. "We do know there was significant sewage and a large fish kill, so there most likely will be a fine." (Mayor Scott Webster said after the meeting he was at the site this afternoon and the odor coming from the Bunton Branch was not caused by the sewage, per se, but by the dead fish.)

However, Sellers said the city is in the middle of a Sanitary Sewer Overflow Initiative with the TCEQ. "We began that process after the last big storm event when we knew we had some issues with our collection system. (The SSOI) allows us to enter into a partnership with the TCEQ to begin the process to overhaul our system, remediate where lines are undersized. It helps that we were going through our wastewater model and we’re using that model with our partnership with TCEQ. So they are already aware that we are trying to take steps and have identified a flaw in our system and that we’re trying to take steps to correct that. Part of that is the addition of SCADA. When the city receives a fine from TCEQ there are things that we can do in lieu of cash if the TCEQ will allow that. It may not cover all the fine amount but we may be able to do things such as re-stock fish, put in education programs. We could even do a recycling program. Because we are part of that SSOI program, I am encouraged that they will be a little more lenient and be open to working with us."