TAMPA, Fla. — Hundreds of thousands of gallons of raw sewage — enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool, was spilled into the Hillsborough River, according to state environmental reports.
Charles Hooper lives in the Mirela North apartments and remembers receiving a boil water notice in early January due to a sewage spill.
“It said that we should take caution in drinking the water. Boil it if we have to, stuff like that. Just giving us a heads up,” Hooper said.
More than six weeks later, we are getting a better picture of the extent of that sewage spill into the Hillsborough River, the main source of Tampa's drinking water.
According to an investigation by the Environmental Protection Commission of Hillsborough County, the estimated 630,000-gallon spill began on Jan. 10 after Tampa Electric turned off the power to the lift station at Mirela North due to nonpayment.
The lift station was without power for about a week, and the untreated sewage from Mirela North and Riverside Palms apartments emptied into the river.
“This is an unauthorized discharge of sewage. It should not happen. It's not a good thing anytime it happens,” said Sam Elrabi, director of the water management division at the Environmental Protection Commission.
EPC was not made aware of the spill until seven days after.
“We really did not know what impact we had for that full week. That wastewater has gone. It went into the river, diluted and flowed off,” said Elrabi.
ABC Action News reached out to Tampa Electric, but they would not confirm nor deny whether the power was cut because the apartment complex did not pay the bill, saying customer payment information is confidential. TECO also did not answer whether it knew it was shutting off power to a lift station.
The City of Tampa’s wastewater department said because this wastewater overflow is from private property, the property owners are responsible to maintain their wastewater system.
According to Tampa Bay Water, the spill has not impacted the regional drinking water supply.
Dr. Serge Thomas is an associate professor at Florida Gulf Coast University’s Water School. He said the environmental impact after a sewage spill can be severe, for example, red tide and algae blooms.
“We dodged a bullet here I don’t expect it to create issues down the road. Of course, I wish we had more monitoring along the river. That would be helpful to assess the situation,” said Dr. Thomas.
The environment commission’s enforcement department is considering a penalty for the companies that own both apartment complexes.
