Southwest Airlines Ask Waste Treatment Worker: Wanna Get Away?

February 1, 2008

CNN just reported that 2.7 million gallons of sewage has been dumped into the Bay courtesy of our own Marin County waste treatment plant. Apparently, it happened last night and it is just being reported within the last 16 minutes. Nobody appears to know what happened and they don’t think there is any chlorine in the mix. Needless to say (but we will say it anyway) — stay out of the muck.

This is just on the heels of a Marin IJ report that the Novato Sanitary District has been fined $153,000 for 53 non-standard discharges into San Pablo Bay.

Update 4:06pm: The SF Chronicle reports that this was due to operator error. The worker failed to set up enough pumps to direct all the water out of the Mill Valley plant. The spill was partially treated, but tests are pending. Local governments and officials were notified early this morning, but the public and press was notified 20 hours after the spill.

The sewage was discharged into Arroyo Corte Madera del Presidio, a creek that flows into Bothin Marsh, a wetland of Richardson Bay.

A plant worker monitoring operations on his computer was the first to notice problem around 8:30 p.m. Thursday.

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