According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the City of Columbia has leaked large amounts of sewage into local rivers. Between January 2008 and November 2009, EPA numbers show 257 instances of sanitary sewer overflows impacting local waterways. In the 257 events, more than 3.3 million gallons of sewage went into local waterways.
These totals do not include the most recent and record setting rainfall the Midlands received since December. Both the EPA and the Department of Health and Environmental Control are investigating the city, but could not comment further.
Alan Mehrzad is the voice of the congaree river. As riverkeeper, he's charged with making sure its waters are safe and clean, but Mehrzad says sewage spills are impacting the river, your health and everyone's wallet.
"This is not something that should be happening in the capital city of a state," says Alan Mehrzad, Congaree River Keeper.
Mehrzad says every time the area has heavy rainfall, stormwater floods city wastewater pipes causing sewage to spill out of cracks or manholes along pipelines before it reaches wastewater plants.
"I don't want to be too specific, but it's all the unsavory, nasty things that are associated with flushing your toilet," says Mehrzad.
"We've just had an inordinate amount of rain water and its hurt us and hurt us badly," says City of Columbia Public Works Director John Dooley.
Dooley admits this has been an on-going challenge. He says there are many issues working against the aging system.including staffing, mechanical issues and the public dumping items like grease into the system.
"It happens everywhere," says Columbia City Councilman Daniel Rickenmann. "I mean private organizations who run systems right here in our county have the same issues."
Mehrzad took WACH Fox to a major pumping station near the South Carolina baseball stadium off Blossom Street. According to Dooley, this is one of the city's regularly maintained stations. Mehrzad disagrees, pointing out a downed siltfence, the smell of sewage and a pathway from overflow to the river.
"Bascially what you have here is a lack of regular maintenance," says Mehrzad.
According to several city officials about 30 percent of the money generated by the wastewater system goes back into fixing it. A large percentage of the remaining 100 percent goes into labor and special chemicals used at treatment plants. The city confirms the system makes a profit, but critics question why council has used portions of that money for unrelated projects.
"If you look at it, it's like our return on investment," says Tamika Isaac Devine, Columbia City Council. "It's all legal, but over the past years, we've been decreasing the amount transferred over from water and sewer into the general fund because we recognize that we've got some long term needs."
Council says it's trying to fix the problem by reducing transfers from its water and sewer account, enacting million dollar changes to the system and securing bonds. Council is also considering possible increases to your utility bill. Depending on which councilperson you talk to, the potential amount varies.
"I do think we're going to have to have some kind of increase to stay in because we don't want to cause problems in the future where somebody gets an increase of 10 percent because we didn't increase for the last five years," says Columbia City Councilman Daniel Rickenmann.
City officials say they are in year two of a five year plan, but the public works director says realistically it will take longer to fix all the problems.
"I would think within the next 10 to 15 years, I hope our system is much stronger and we don't have a 12 month period like we just experienced," says Dooley.
The man keeping an eye on things says change needs to happen soon because public health will be at risk when the weather gets warmer and people spend more time outside. Mehrzad fears rivergoers could contract infections.
"It really affects the publics perception about the state of our city and the safety and cleanliness of our waterways," says Mehrzad.
Rain events are expected to continue thanks to the El Nino pattern this winter. The State Climatology Office confirmed that it has been an overly active winter across the state for precipitation.
According to EPA stats, the city has had a total of 644 sanitary sewer overflows. These numbers include non-waterway related overflows. The total amount of overflows reported by the EPA is more than 3.6 million gallons in the time period listed above.
