Blankenship: Aquia Creek again a cesspool

Aquia Creek again a cesspool?

Possibly dangerous lapses in Stafford County’s safety notification procedures occurred during Aug. 22-23, affecting unaware pleasure boaters, fishers and swimmers on Aquia Creek during peak weekend patronage that Saturday and Sunday.

As already reported last week in a county press release, that’s when major sewage spills accidentally flooded waterways of Aquia Harbour and the creek downstream. They went undiscovered by utility officials until Aug. 24.

The county explained that lightning strikes fouled up electronic devices that monitor the operating pump stations and alert personnel about malfunctions. Since no human surveillance of the systems occurred during the weekend, as is reportedly customary, sewage from two pump stations flowed undetected into the waterways for an extended time.

Those two pump stations, reportedly crippled by the lightning strikes, then spewed a voluminous 2.5 million gallons of sewage into Austin Run and then into Aquia Creek, and 55,000 gallons into Aquia Creek further upstream, all in that one weekend.

County staff notified the Aquia Harbour Property Owners’ Association of the spills soon thereafter, since many of its some 7,500 residents have properties fronting on Aquia Creek and its canals there. The notifications, as far as Aquia Creek’s pleasure users during the previous weekend were concerned, were of little help, since exposures to possibly toxic levels of the untreated sewage had already occurred.

The extent of sewage pollution further downstream that might affect both the people frequenting the commercial marinas and owners of homes on the waterfront apparently wasn’t investigated. Even so, subsequent rains served to flush probably most of the sewage out of the creek and into the Potomac River.

The county did report the upstream foul-ups to the state’s Department of Environmental Quality and the Health Department. There was no indication as to whether the county would determine if the creek, aided by the rains, has cleaned itself to the extent that pleasure uses are relatively safe again.

Aquia Harbour directors late in the week planned a direct protest to the county about the lack of a timely warning system. The subject took on added urgency since the community had been plagued as recently as May of this year by another sewage-overflow accident by the county that also poured sewage into the creek.

At a joint meeting of community and county officials to address that situation, promises were made by the county to promptly notify of any future such incidents. All agreed, according to Harbour property owners’ manager Chuck Halt, that greater care would be taken in the handling of waste water affecting Aquia Creek.

Then this.

— Ben Blankenship