Thousands of gallons of sewage spill at Sweeten Creek

ASHEVILLE — More than 7,000 gallons of sewage spilled into Sweeten Creek when rags, towels and grease overwhelmed a pipe and caused it to burst Tuesday at 92 Crayton Road.

In total, the Metropolitan Sewage District reports 7,416 gallons of sewage flowed into the French Broad tributary.

"Any time sewage spills happen, it's bad. It's not something that we want to see," French Broad Riverkeeper Hartwell Carson said Friday afternoon. "Sweeten Creek flows into the Swannanoa River, which then flows into the French Broad — a very active river. We could go down there right now and see people enjoying it in tubes and kayaks."

Though MSD crews were still at Sweeten Creek on Friday afternoon trying to clean up the body of water, Ken Stines, director of system service, said the spill was fully contained by Tuesday afternoon. He said MSD responded to the spill two hours after it began 1:30 p.m. Tuesday.

"Once you have one of these overflows, it takes a lot of man hours to take care of it," Stines said. "Whenever we have a spill, though, we are pretty good at getting in there and cleaning it up."

When the Citizen-Times contacted Carson, the French Broad riverkeeper, he said Friday he did not know about the spill himself.

"I did not hear about that one, but I'm actually planning on being out on that stretch of French Broad this weekend," Carson said. "The Swannanoa has probably diluted (the sewage and bacteria) to the point where those levels are not terribly worrisome by the time it gets to the French Broad."

Stines said these types of overflows have been increasing recently in Asheville. He said 35 SSOs have already happened this year.

The reason for the spike in overflows? Stines said it's likely a combination of two things: an old sewage line system and people flushing items down toilets and drains that should not be flushed.

"This one got clogged up by heavy rags, big rags and people putting things in the toilet that they shouldn't," Stines said, citing antibacterial wipes as an example. "The only thing that should go in the toilet is three things: pee, poop and paper — and by paper, I mean toilet paper."

That's a real problem, Stines said, because anything that travels through the sewer system, be it through the sink or toilet, goes through a small series of pipes. As it goes farther along in the system, the pipe sizes increase as it travels to Woodfin and goes to MSD's treatment process plant.

But most of those pipes that waste travels through, are not new.

"Some of it is in really good shape, and some of it is not," he said. "A lot of our pipes are not designed for a lot of the things people put in the toilet or down the sink."

Since 1998, MSD has been rehabilitating 50,000 linear feet of sewage line — or 1 percent of MSD's total lines — every year. Stines said about $16 million is allocated to the project.

"We've made a significant difference, but we've still got a ways to go," Stines said. "Just last week we were doing a project on the South end, and that line was from 1897."



Note: A previous version of this article stated that the Citizen-Times was not notified about the spill as required by state law. The paper did receive notice by fax.