Sewage Floods Batiquitos Lagoon : County Health Officials See Little Cause for Worry

More than a million gallons of raw sewage has spilled into Batiquitos Lagoon over the last two days after a bearing blew at one of the Leucadia County Water District’s major pumping stations.

The breakdown was fixed just after noon Friday, according to the water district’s manager, Joan Geiselhart, but not before raw sewage spewed from a manhole at the pump station and flooded the western bay of the wide and shallow lagoon, situated between Carlsbad and Leucadia.

Although area residents reported that the sewage filled the air around the lagoon with ripe smells, county health officials said there is little cause for concern.

“While any sewage spill is unfortunate, Batiquitos is not exactly a Mission Bay, where you’ve got a lot of water contact because of sports activity,” said John Melbourn, county public health engineer. “Only if someone ingested or swallowed that water would you have a health problem, and not that many people frequent the lagoon in the first place.”

Nonetheless, Geiselhart said signs alerting residents and passers-by to the spill had been posted.

As for the birds and other wildlife that thrive in and around Batiquitos, Department of Fish and Game officials said that the spill will likely reduce the lagoon’s fish population but do little additional damage. (Because of its shallow waters and high salinity, Batiquitos has a relatively small fish population.)

The broken bearing was discovered by district maintenance workers early Thursday morning at the pump station, which is just north of La Costa Avenue and east of Carlsbad Boulevard.

Normally, Geiselhart said, a breakdown would have triggered a standby pump to activate and take over the pumping chores. But the backup unit had been removed over the weekend because it needed an overhaul.

“Our timing was terrific,” Geiselhart said, “but these are things you just can’t predict.”

The faulty bearing had to be sent to San Diego for repairs, and was not ready for reinstallment until midday Thursday. In the meantime, district work crews diverted some sewage to other pipelines and were able to reduce the rate of spillage from 4,000 gallons per minute to 500 gallons per minute.

It was the first major spill at Batiquitos since 1983, when an electrical panel failed and a comparable spill occurred, Geiselhart said.

The Leucadia County Water District, which serves Leucadia and La Costa as well as parts of Encinitas and Olivenhain, handles about 3 million gallons of sewage daily, treating some at its own plant and sending the rest to the Encina sewage treatment facility in Carlsbad.