A Winter Springs wastewater plant undergoing maintenance in past years
According to reports filed by the City of Winter Springs to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, a catastrophic failure occurred at a wastewater plant, releasing more than 383,000 gallons of water into the environment, affecting the ground and nearby storm drainage. The event occurred on August 16th, between 4:00pm and 5:25pm at the plant near Elmwood Drive and was blamed on a “reclaimed main failure” according to documents obtained by the Winter Springs Community Association.
The tank containing the water is 28 feet in height, and has a volume of 2.2 million gallons. In roughly an hour and twenty minutes, water began gushing out of the tank, dropping the water level in the tank by four feet, causing a spill of an estimated 383,390 gallons into the environment.
This is easily the largest spill since the Winter Springs Water Quality Initiative has been tracking the ongoing infrastructure failures being faced by the City of Winter Springs.
Separate Incident: 9,828 gallons of “digested sludge” released into ground
In a separate incident, documents obtained by the WSCA found that on August 20th, nearly 10,000 gallons of digested sludge were unlawfully released by another water plant (read the report), affecting the ground area around the plant. Digested sludge is a byproduct of wastewater after organic material in sewage has been broken down by bacteria, which may still contain pathogens, heavy metals, and other contaminants that can pose risks to human health and the environment. If untreated, contaminants can seep into the ground and affect local water supplies. The City of Winter Springs claims to have recovered all of the illegally discharged sludge.
No Notice Sent–Misinformation Website Still Visible
Despite these massive infrastructure failures, residents were unable to locate any notices sent by the city alerting residents of the potential environmental risks involved with a main line break. The attempted obvious coverup extended to Monday’s City Commission meeting in which city staff gave an in-depth presentation about Winter Springs water without mentioning two massive spills which had been reported to DEP days earlier.
This failure occurred as the City of Winter Springs has received multiple Consent Orders for water system failures, and still maintains a years-old taxpayer funded website claiming “fast-tracked” water pipe upgrades were “preventing future releases”.
Even though no notice was sent alerting residents of the critical failure, the City does still publish a website (screen shot below) containing references to a “Science Center” which does not physically exist, purposely designed to diminish growing residents concerns about our wastewater and other infrastructural challenges.
After the now famous fish kill incident in the Highlands, the City of Winter Springs published this tax payer funded website which claimed that the issues had been fixed due to “Fast-Tracked Investments”, which resolved the mechanical failures, pipe upgrades, which would prevent future releases. The website, which contains several other false and misleading statements about consent orders and other items, are still viewable by the public years later, and have not been updated despite this months massive discharges which prove the issues have not been fixed, even as the City of Winter Springs has faced several audits and investigations surrounding its use of tax payer dollars and management of its infrastructure.
Image 1: Wastewater Malfunction Report indicating digested sludge discharge
Image 2: Wastewater Malfunction report indicating 383,000+ gallons of wastewater discharged by City of Winter Springs