Why Sewage Flowed Unchecked for 2 Days Remains a Mystery

City water officials said Wednesday they have yet to figure out why a broken sewer main in Del Cerro went untended for two days after it was reported to them, eventually spilling 5.1 million gallons of raw sewage into the San Diego River.

Water authorities confirmed that a Del Cerro resident called a 24-hour emergency number Saturday and told of a leak in Alvarado Canyon, near his home on Adobe Falls Place. The resident, retired Navy Capt. Jack Laney, called back Monday when the spill had not yet been inspected.

“I saw that the water had changed color, and I knew there was a problem,” Laney said. “And the smell indicated a sewer break. I tracked it upstream, and I found it.

“I called the sewer repair number . . . and told (the dispatcher) that we had a major sewer break out here, and she said she’d send somebody right out. That was Saturday morning, and nobody came. I suspect somebody down the line didn’t think it was that big of an emergency.”

Laney said he first noticed that the water had changed color last Thursday, so the sewage may have been flowing since then. Officials are unsure whether the telephone dispatcher didn’t relay Laney’s Saturday message to investigators, or whether investigators got the message but didn’t respond.

“We are aware that a little bit of a communication error occurred,” said Charles Yackley, assistant deputy director of the city Water Utilities Department. “When it’s raining, we get a lot of calls about leaks and overflows. It was like many calls we received that day to investigate. On its face, it didn’t seem out of the ordinary. But it is not clarified as to how the lack of communication occurred.”

Warning signs have been posted along the river and at Dog Beach and Ocean Beach. Fishing, swimming and wading in the contaminated water could lead to serious gastrointestinal diseases, officials said.

The warning signs are in English only, said Daniel Avera, spokesman for County Health Services. He said there is a concern that people who don’t speak English will eat contaminated fish, but he said that health problems are unlikely to arise if the fish are cleaned and cooked properly.

The break in the sewer main was caused by last week’s heavy rainstorms, which eroded the ground supporting the 21-inch-diameter main, just north of Interstate 8 in Alvarado Canyon.

The sewage flow into the river was stopped late Tuesday afternoon by channeling it into a gully and diverting it into another sewage line downstream, officials said. The bypass will serve until repairs to the main are made, which could take three weeks, said Daryl Grigsby, deputy director of the city Water Utilities Department.

Grigsby said he and other officials aren’t taking the spill, and the lack of communication surrounding it, lightly.

“We’re taking it very seriously because we rely on our investigation units and our dispatchers for the response,” he said. “Certainly this is a serious matter for us, in that we are spending time making sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“The unfortunate thing is, we respond to thousands of calls like this per year, and 99.9% of them are taken care of with no problem,” Grigsby said. “Part of the frustration is that we do receive so many calls a day, and a lot end up being either a property problem or storm runoff. But we investigate them all.”

The sewage spill, which flowed down the canyon at 1,200 gallons per minute, is a health threat to anyone coming into contact with the water.

“If you swim in sewage without sores or without swallowing the water, the chances of sickness are slim,” Stephany said. “But if you swallow it or have a sore, you have a chance of gastrointestinal disorders similar to the stomach flu. So we try to keep people out. If you eat fish out of sewage water, you run the risk of the same diseases.”

The ingestion of sewage can cause more serious diseases, such as cholera or hepatitis, Stephany added.

This sewage spill is the biggest of 1991 in San Diego County. A March 1 sewer main break let 492,000 gallons of raw sewage in Mission Bay, and a March 6 spill in Fallbrook may have sent 600,000 gallons into the San Luis Rey River, officials said.

Last Thursday, a federal judge fined the city $3 million for earlier sewage spills that violated federal clean-water laws.