Stench from Hurricane Irma shines a light on sewage problems

INDIAN HARBOUR BEACH — Scott Hoffman braved the brutal winds and surge, but the stench Hurricane Irma left behind was more than he could bear.

Unbeknownst to him and others in the Satellite Beach area, Brevard County piped 20 million gallons of raw sewage — diluted by rain and groundwater — into the Anchor Drive Canal near their homes in the days during and after Irma. The canal flows to the Banana River and the Indian River Lagoon, an estuary of national significance worth $7.6 billion annually to the regional economy.

"How is that all right to turn my backyard into a cesspool and not even tell me about it, because they don't want to have sewage back up in other peoples' homes?" Hoffman lamented recently at Oars and Paddles Park in Indian Harbour Beach.

He and others learned of the spill the hard way. Waterfront owners, bait and tackle shops, paddlers, and many-a-nose suffered in Irma's wake.

Brevard officials defended the county's actions during the storm: It was either release sewage to the lagoon or allow it to back up into homes.

County officials now say Irma heightened their resolve to strengthen the sewerage infrastructure to prevent large-scale discharges.

They say $134 million in fixes to old pipes and other sewage infrastructure are underway, but Irma caught the county midstream in that plan. Decades of trying to keep sewage fees low also limited how much the county could do to temper sewage overflows.They can only pump, treat or store so much water. And Irma's deluge far eclipsed what nearby ponds could hold.

"We're going to try to do everything we can right now to start minimizing the effect of the future storms that we might have," Brevard County Utilities Director Jim Helmer said. "It's the number one priority on our list at this point."

But Brevard’s experience touches on a much broader problem countywide, statewide and nationwide: Aging sewer infrastructure and tight budgets literally laying waste to vital coastal waters such as the lagoon. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates $271 billion is needed to maintain and improve the nation's wastewater infrastructure, including fixing the pipes that carry sewage to treatment plants, bringing in new treatment technology and finding better ways to manage runoff.

Engineers estimate Florida's needs at $18.4 billion to fix aging sewage infrastructure over the next 20 years. Brevard is in year four of a 10-year, $134 million sewer system upgrade plan.

But in an area so reliant on tourism, rancid water can be economically catastrophic. For many Brevardians, Hurricane Irma was the last straw, prompting them to push local and state government to speed up solutions.

State Sen. Debbie Mayfield, R-Vero Beach, recently proposed creating $50 million in state grants for projects that convert septic tanks to sewage systems, increase water-quality monitoring and ease runoff. Irma’s sewage fallout prompted State Rep. Randy Fine, R-Palm Bay, to draft a bill to allow local governments to use tourist tax revenue to fix sewage problems. He wants to shift $14.4 million in Brevard County tourist development taxes typically spent on event venues and parks to solve chronic sewage spills, which can harm tourism.

After Irma, mansions on Lansing Island became "sewage-front," Hoffman said. Homeowners kept children and dogs from the water. Yellow health department signs warned to stay out of bacteria-laden canals. Some saw what looked like fecal matter drifting down canals: not the optics tourism officials hope for.

"If we don’t have something for tourists to visit, then all the tourism advertising in the world won't matter," Fine said.

Brevard County Commission plans to address its sewage problems during its Dec. 5 meeting, after a presentation from its utilities department.

Hoffman says the odious odor first struck him when he saw feces and toilet paper floating in Anchor Canal and Grand Canal, where homeowner pride runs deep in keeping yards lush and tidy. Hoffman and his fellow paddlers with Heart & Soul Dragon Boat Team, a breast cancer support group, worried during their weekly lagoon outings about exposure to pathogens.

"A lot of the paddlers were really concerned about paddling after the storm because the were worried about getting exposed to bacteria," Hoffman said.

Many of them voted last year to tax themselves to save the lagoon and can’t understand why they must heed local rules that temper lawn fertilizing and pet waste, while local governments can dump countless gallons of sewage at a time, fertilizing future excess algae growth.

"They're dumping unmetered millions of gallons every year," said Chris Beckett, a Brevard County fishing charter captain. "That's the reason the lagoon's sick."

Their frustration spawns, in part, from an old stretch of pipe along South Patrick Drive that serves the Satellite Beach area and breaks somewhere with each heavy storm. Or when rains overwhelm nearby lift stations, the county pumps millions of gallons of sewage into lagoon-linked canals or ponds to stop sewage from backing up in homes.

Over the past five years, Brevard County discharged raw sewage to the lagoon six times after the same South Patrick pipeline broke, spilling a total of 2.3 million gallons of wastewater into the lagoon, county utility officials said. Two of those discharges last year resulted in fines totaling $4,000.

During Irma, Brevard Utility officials say they were literally deluged, citing Irma's 10 inches of rain, amounting to 2.3 billion gallons of water that fell within the county's service area, overwhelming the sewer system in the Satellite Beach area, which was designed to handle 8 million gallons a day.

"If only three-tenths of 1 percent of that rainfall enters that sewer system, it becomes completely flooded," Mark Reagan, the county's lead utilities engineer, recently told an oversight committee that advises Brevard County Commission on lagoon cleanups.

He also cited old cracked clay pipe that allows groundwater to infiltrate sewer pipes, and people illegally connecting pools and stormwater to the sanitary sewer system.

Fixes will be expensive, county officials say. Options include $50 million for a new 6 million gallon treatment plant in Indian Harbour Beach, $30 million for a new storage tank on soccer fields near Satellite Beach Library, or storing excess sewage in retention basins — the least popular option. "It's essentially a cesspool, and nobody wants that," Reagan told the lagoon oversight committee.

Old private pipes, septic tanks worsen sewage fallout

The problem, however, goes way beyond just local government sewage systems that get overwhelmed in heavy rains:

Sewer mains, distribution lines and residential "laterals" leak unknown volumes of raw sewage that can seep into the water table and the lagoon;

Tens of thousands of private pipes from sewer systems to Brevard homes are riddled with holes, releasing untold volumes of raw sewage;

Tar joints between old vitrified clay pipes — most installed in the 1960s — have decayed. Now they stop up and crack under the pressure;

And an estimated 300,000 septic tanks along the lagoon, including 90,000 in Brevard, sit in sandy soils that in most cases are poorly suited for removing contaminants from wastewater. And the Florida Department of Health finds 8-11 percent of septic tanks are failing.

Still, in the five-county lagoon region, Brevard tends to spill the most sewage.

According initial estimates from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, more than 40 million gallons of wastewater was reported discharged in the five counties surrounding the lagoon (Brevard, Indian River, Volusia, Martin and St. Lucie) in the past three years. Of that, at least 20.8 million gallons was discharged in Brevard, most of it during and after Irma.

In October, DEP warned Brevard County it could face civil penalties for the sewage spills associated with Irma and subsequent rains. The state agency cited a history of collection system failures that resulted in unauthorized sewage releases.

Most recently, on Nov. 15 up to 3.1 million gallons of raw sewage spilled into the Indian River Lagoon from a broken sewer pipe on State Road A1A in Vero Beach.

Not all of those reported spills impacted the lagoon or other waterways, and the DEP data doesn't always account for wastewater contained or recovered during spills. But many times, sewage spills go into unlined ponds, where nitrogen and phosphorus can seep into groundwater that migrates to the lagoon.

Sewage spills add to muck buildup, when the algae rots. For that and health reasons, lagoon advocates say sewage spills shouldn't be taken lightly.

"I don't think we should rationalize failure," said Duane DeFreese, executive director of the Indian River Lagoon Council, which oversees lagoon cleanups. "We know, as stressors accumulate, you're going to see that displayed in animal and plant morbidity and mortality."

Scientists already are seeing ill effects from sewage in lagoon bottlenose dolphins, hinting at threats to human health. Biologists say we should heed those warnings because dolphins are at the top the food chain and eat the same fish we do.

Since 2003, a team of FAU-Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution in Fort Pierce and other researchers have examined and released more than 360 bottlenose dolphins, 250 of them from the lagoon, the rest in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. They find only half of those dolphins are clinically healthy, and the lagoon dolphins are worse off.

Dolphins studied near Merritt Island, especially, seem in poor health. And the researchers point to water tainted by partially treated sewage and runoff as the possible cause.

Tossing back 'keepers'

Fishing's been great lately, local anglers say, but folks are reluctant to eat their catches.

The Grand Canal teams with mangrove snapper near piers and docks this time of year, said Captain Chris Beckett, of Central Florida Sport Fishing Charters. But the foul odor has been so obvious, lately, that Beckett takes his clients elsewhere.

"Now they've flooded that canal with sewage," Beckett said. "I can't morally take my clients down that canal," he added. "I won't fish that area again until probably May or June."

Beckett and some others upset about all the sewage spills say the county should be able to increase capacity without raising rates.

Sewage sins of the past

Lagoon sewage used to be much worse.

In 1986, 46 sewer plants discharged almost 55 million gallons of wastewater daily into the lagoon. A 1990 state law put a stop to most of those discharges by 1996. But several cities have been permitted to discharge treated sewage when plant capacity is exceeded during storms, including plants in Cocoa Beach, Cape Canaveral, Rockledge, Melbourne, Barefoot Bay and Brevard County's South Beaches plant.

Cities struggle too

Cash-strapped cities such as Palm Bay struggle to keep up with maintaining hundreds of lift stations and sewer pipes well past their prime. Like Brevard, they conduct smoke tests to find leaks, then coats cracks with an epoxy resin they pump into the pipes.

But utility officials say preventing rain-driven spills like those this past September would require impractical, expensive increases to sewer plant capacity for weather events that happen only once every decade or so.

The American Society of Civil Engineers' 2017 report card on the state of America's infrastructure — released every four years — gave Florida a "C" for sewerage infrastructure, dropping from a B-minus. The report identified $18.4 billion in sewerage infrastructure needs in Florida over the next 20 years.

In many sewage spills, groundwater and sand infiltrate and clog old cracked pipes, leading to overflows elsewhere in the system. Or roots intrude.

With older pipes, particularly the clay pipes, joints come apart. Saltier soils — especially beachside — tend to wear more on sewer pipes.

Cities employ small armies of robots to spot faulty pipes, to figure out what needs fixing first. Smoke pumped into pipes puffs up in yards like tiny geysers, revealing where the leaks are.

To keep taxes low, Brevard held off for years on raising sewer rates to meet its sewerage infrastructure needs, putting its rates at about 25 percent below the state average. But the $134 million spending plan made rates go up 20 percent or more in five years, to support the bonds needed to fund all the sewage upgrades.

Lousy pipes to homes are worse

Sewer overflows, caused by blocked or broken pipes, result in the release of as much as 10 billion gallons of raw sewage yearly, according to the EPA.

But even when local governments upgrade sewer infrastructure, often the hookups from homes are so old that sewage leaks are imminent, and can cumulatively release much more sewage than the public system, utility officials say.

Pipe called Orangeburg — wood pulp covered in coal tar — links thousands of homes in Brevard to sewer systems. The pipe, used in new airfields and military bases during World War II, also filled the post-war demand for affordable piping when materials were scarce after the war.

Demand for the pipe boomed in the 1950s and 1960s, until the advent of PVC in the 1970s.

According to county property appraiser data, some 52,000 single-family homes were built between 1945 and 1975, when the pipe's use was widespread.

But it can cost thousands of dollars for homeowners to replace the old pipes from their homes that link to the sewer mains.

Brevard is partnering with Satellite Beach to create a pilot program that creates incentives for homeowners to inspect and repair old leaking sewer pipes to homes.

Meanwhile, the sewage Irma forced into the lagoon has long since dissipated, but the outrage lingers on.

"Why has it been allowed to go on for 10 years?" Hoffman recently wrote in an email to County Manager Frank Abbate.

Tess Lamers, who lives on Marina Isles Boulevard in Indian Harbour Beach, paddled out on her kayak during the post-Irma sewage fallout.

"It was so disgusting on the water, that we came off the water," Lamers said. "We knew that something was very wrong."

She worries most about health risks.

"If they're being told it's safe, my concern is somebody's going to end up with some sort of staph infection," Lamers said.

"We just voted to pay extra money in taxes to clean our lagoon, and they're pumping raw sewage."

Contact Waymer at 321-242-3663 or jwaymer@floridatoday.com Follow him on Twitter @JWayEnviro or www.facebook.com/jim.waymer

Want to go?

The Utilities Department will make a presentation on the state of Brevard County's sewage systems and plans for upgrades at 5 p.m. Dec. 5 in the Brevard County Commission Chambers at the Viera Government Complex, 2725 Fran Jamieson Way, Bldg. C.