Pflugerville Outlines Steps To Prevent Future Creek Spills

PFLUGERVILLE, TX — City officials on Monday outlined a number of measures taken to prevent another chlorine spill like the one that happened in March, but continue resisting payment of a state fine for the 3.4-million-gallon leak.

A mechanical failure at the Gilleland Creek wastewater treatment plant on Sunday, March 3, went undetected until the following day at 7:45 a.m. By the time city officials noticed the leak, millions of gallons of treated, chorinated effluent was discharged into Gilleland Creek downstream of the water plant. One of the de-chlorination pumps designed to remove chlorine from the water prior to release into the creek malfunctioned, city officials explained.

"Repairs were made immediately, and it was estimated that during the time of the failure, an estimated 3.4 million gallons of treated, chlorinated effluent was discharged into Gilleland Creek downstream of the wastewater plant," a city spokeswoman wrote in a press advisory. "It was determined the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system did not report the pump failure due to a communications issue between the pump and the SCADA system."

Related stories:

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Pump Fail Dumps 3.4M Gallons Of Chlorinated Water In Pflugerville

As required by law, the city notified the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) environmental regulatory agency to alert of the leak that resulted in a fish kill. "City staff implemented monitoring and cleanup of the creek for the next several days following the discharge."

In a follow-up to news of the leak, Patch was first to report Pflugerville was fined more than $30,000 for the leak but city officials have so far resisted the state's effort to collect the penalty. In her press advisory, city spokeswoman Maggie Holman suggested the fine should be waived given the city's otherwise diligent stewardship of city waterways. The city was fined $33,000 for the fish-killing spill, as Patch reported on July 15 after a formal request for information from the TCEQ.

"The City of Pflugerville cares deeply about the quality of our streams, rivers, and lakes and strives to hold our water quality to the highest standards," Holman wrote. "With this in mind, the city is preparing a response to TCEQ contesting the fine and proposing alternate means of restitution."

She added that repairs were made to the failed pump within 15 minutes after the failure was discovered. In addition, within the following week, repairs were made to the SCADA system and monitoring was expanded to include the transmission of pump run/failure information, she wrote.

"Staff also made additional improvements, including the installation of a secondary wireless monitoring system and installation of a flow detection sensor," the spokeswoman continued. "Finally, the city is in the process of expanding its wastewater treatment plant and will be converting to a UV disinfection system that will dramatically reduce the need for chemical treatment. "

The March spill isn't the first time water quality at the creek has been compromised after mechanical failure. In recent years, other significant spills have occurred at city treatment plants:

• In 2014, more than a million gallons of untreated sewage flowed into Gilleland Creek in the early morning hours of a Sunday after a power outage disabled a Pflugerville wastewater treatment plant, according to reports. Residents were given safety tips in the aftermath of that spill, particularly to those with private drinking water supply wells within a half-mile of the spill site or one mile downstream, according to the report.
• The following year, a contractor inadvertently ruptured an 8-inch water main that caused a spill of 560,000 gallons of chlorinated water into the creek. According to information found on the City of Pflugerville website, a Texas Parks and Wildlife investigation found the 2015 discharge killed about 1,575 fish. The restitution value of the lost fish and investigation cost was calculated at the time to be $1,047, city officials reported at the time.

In a Lower Colorado River Authority assessment, Gilleland Creek in 2004 was found by TCEQ officials to have "impaired water quality due to bacteria levels in excess of state standards," according to the document. A so-called Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) study of flow and bacteria levels in Gilleland Creek subsequently was conducted by the LCRA and TCEQ in 2006, which found that elevated bacteria levels correlated with higher flow in the creek from storm water runoff, according to the findings.