PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. — The City of St. Petersburg said approximately 10,000 gallons of wastewater spilled into Riviera Bay from 5-7 p.m. Saturday while fixing a sewer line break at the 8400 block of Tallahassee Dr. NE.
The spillage into Riviera Bay has been stopped while crews repair the 24-inch main. Repairs are expected to be completed by Aug. 22.
The City of St. Petersburg advised the public to avoid contact with Riviera Bay until further notice and water quality testing is completed. The city also expects intermittent road closures at the San Martin Boulevard NE Bridge while containment efforts and construction work are ongoing.
"It's never a good thing to have waste in the water, but the city kind of has a history of spilling a lot more than 10,000 gallons into the bay. For me, this doesn't seem as bad as the things in the past when we had heavy rains, but it's not good, it's not a good thing," Robert Chamberlin, St. Pete resident, explained.
Crews constructed a pit lined with sandbags to capture the sewage as it leaked from the pipe.
Crews are using vacuum trucks to pull the sewage out of the pit, preventing any additional leakage into the bay. All sewage vacuumed from the containment pit is trucked away for full treatment in the city's wastewater facilities.
