MELBOURNE, Fla. — Residents in Brevard County near the Eau Gallie River in Melbourne continued to deal with the stink of sewage Thursday.
The city said a wastewater pipe was leaking after a worker accidentally hit it.
City workers hoped to fix the pipe by midnight, but a clamp used to plug the break is leaking some wastewater, officials said.
The wastewater was being rerouted into a retention pond.
“Probably four two-inch diameter holes that they knocked into it, plus some scrapes along the way, which is making it difficult to fix,” Public Works & Utilities assistant director Harold C. Nantz said.
Melbourne city officials said a contractor was drilling under the Eau Gallie River to install a new reclaimed water pipe when they hit a wastewater pipe, causing wastewater to spill into the river.
“We had our wastewater treatment laboratory folks come out. They took sampling upstream and sampling downstream just to see if we see anything from it,” Nantz said.
Resident Austin Athey said he could smell sewage at Ballard Park, which is about a mile away from the site where crews busted the pipe.
“It smells, and it’s kind of gross. I mean, it’s nothing you want to be swimming in or boating in or anything like that. Especially since it leads out to the river and stuff like that,” said Athey.
Melbourne city officials warned people about high bacterial levels, and are urging people not to swim or fish in the river.
So far, it has been very difficult to stop the leak because of the volume of wastewater flowing through the pipe, he said.
“Right now, the flow is so much, even if we block it off, everything starts caving back in, and it flows over anyway, because there’s so much flow,“ said Nantz.
Homeowners’ water was not impacted by the break, officials said.
Melbourne resident Barbara Marinelli was upset that she couldn't spend time outside.
"It smells like a backed up toilet," she said. "I mean, we've got this beautiful, clear weather, and now we have to deal with this. It's a shame."
City officials said they estimate anywhere between 30,000 and 400,000 gallons of wastewater leaked into the river. It takes up to 24 hours to get results back from water testing, and it should give them a better idea of the impact the spill had on the environment.
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