Officials clean up ‘a couple thousand gallons’ of wastewater from local treatment plant
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AMERICAN FALLS — The American Falls Wastewater Treatment plant experienced a waste overflow earlier this week.
The treatment plant first reported the spillage to the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality on Sunday morning, which leaked into the building’s parking lot and the nearby Snake River. Staff took water samples testing for E. coli in the river everyday until Wednesday, and found the samples were well below “hazardous” levels, according to a DEQ official.
“We’re working with the wastewater treatment plant to hopefully prevent this from occurring again,” an official speaking on behalf of the DEQ said. “It was cleaned up really quickly and addressed quickly.”
EastIdahoNews.com reached out to the city of American Falls, but couldn’t immediately get a comment.
The DEQ said the amount of water leaked from the facility was likely around “a couple thousand gallons.” While this may sound like a great amount, the treatment plant has the capacity to process around 600,000 gallons a day of sewage.
“The amount that spilled sounds like a lot, but in the scheme of things and the amount of water that is going through the system from the river, it really is a small amount,” the official said.
While alarms at the treatment plant didn’t go off to indicate that an overflow was occurring, staff discovered the issue quickly, stopped it and began working to clean it up, the DEQ said.
Wastewater treatment staff were able to clean up the parking lot and the road leading up to it using a back truck, and afterwards were able to sanitize the area.
The Power County Sheriff’s Office helped direct people away from the area, as well as close river access until Wednesday once the test samples came back as not hazardous. The waste that leaked into the water was diluted by the rivers flow at that point.
“The river there is really turbulent and moves very quickly. So basically, it just flushes it and dilutes it and then the UV rays from the sun can kill the bacteria,” the official explained.
The Wastewater Treatment Plant is downstream from American Falls.
The department is not aware of any wildlife deaths as a result of the spill.
The DEQ is still trying to determine what caused it.
“The wastewater treatment plant indicated there was a glitch in their system and then the alarms that would tell them that something’s wrong also failed,” the official said.