West Seattle outage followup: Sewage overflow at Lowman

Update on one effect of last night’s up-to-3-hours West Seattle power outage (WSB as-it-happened coverage here) – a spill at the Lowman Beach pump station, where WSB contributing journalist Christopher Boffoli took that photo last night (the light in the background was from a county truck at the pump station). This news release is just in from King County:

A power failure in West Seattle last night knocked out electricity at King County’s Murray Avenue Pump Station, causing a small sewage overflow near Lowman Beach Park.

County employees responded quickly Wednesday night and installed a portable generator to provide back up power during the outage. Crews stopped the overflow within 30 minutes.

It’s estimated that about 65,000 gallons of wastewater was discharged through the pump station’s emergency outfall into Puget Sound.

County staff took water quality samples and notified health and regulatory agencies about the overflow.

Utility power was back online within two hours and the facility is again operating normally.

We have followup questions out to Seattle City Light regarding the cause of the “underground cable failure” blamed for last night’s outage, which affected almost 2,800 homes and businesses at its peak.

17 Replies to "West Seattle outage followup: Sewage overflow at Lowman"

  • sw October 15, 2009 (1:52 pm)

    Curious. If this pumping station is this susceptible to overflow as the result of a two-hour power outage, whey do they not have a generator installed or other backup measure?

    FAIL.

  • burglarbustindad October 15, 2009 (1:54 pm)

    I worked on that pump station 20 years ago.
    I was sure they had a back up generator.

  • sw October 15, 2009 (1:56 pm)

    sw’s posting ability: FAIL.

  • WSB October 15, 2009 (1:58 pm)

    sw, our aggressive (but successful – almost 2 million spam comments stopped so far) filter held you up, it wasn’t you :) Some days it gets a little over-aggressive, but if you have ever seen a site that didn’t have a good spam filter … yikes. Anyway, sorry. In most cases we watch the filter and catch mistaken holds fairly quickly – TR

  • Kara October 15, 2009 (2:49 pm)

    Thank God for ‘Glee’K night! I was in Ballard! But I’m sure my clocks will need adjusting when I get home.

  • charlabob October 15, 2009 (2:53 pm)

    Too bad it happened before we have a new mayor. Now we hardly have anyone to blame it on. Maybe they did have one 20 years ago and didn’t have the money to replace it or fix it — thanks to “economies.” For every instance where governments can’t take on a new project, there are three times as many instances of governments not being able to fix something. It’s called attrition.

  • wseye October 15, 2009 (3:03 pm)

    A backup generator is being planned but not yet installed.

  • Leroniusmonkfish October 15, 2009 (4:10 pm)

    That explains why the visibility while diving off of Lowman Beach was so poor yesterday. I thought it was some new species of brown fish I was seeing…turns out it was feces.

  • WSB October 15, 2009 (4:11 pm)

    Unless you were diving at night, it must have been a brown fish – the outage/spill was 6:40-9:40 pm last night – TR

  • Leroniusmonkfish October 15, 2009 (4:35 pm)

    :) I like Nightswimming…great song by REM by the way.

  • Leroniusmonkfish October 15, 2009 (4:48 pm)

    And what’s the big deal with 65,000 gallons of raw sewage? My pool is 15,000 gallons so we are only looking at 4.3 swimming pools of fish food?

  • Scott October 15, 2009 (4:52 pm)

    Please, King County, when is a 65,000 gallon spill considered a “small” spill?

    When do you reach the point of calling it a big nasty mess?

  • wseye October 15, 2009 (6:06 pm)

    Those fish are known as “Finless Browns” in the diver community.

  • Leroniusmonkfish October 15, 2009 (6:57 pm)

    And no matter how you try to serve them (grilled, deep fried, sautéd, etc.) they still taste like crap.

  • Duckitude October 15, 2009 (9:43 pm)

    Hi All: A 65,000 gallon spill of CSO which at that point in time was likely still highly diluted with rainwater and it would not produce much visible “pollution” per se. The sound is always pretty murky during and for up to two days after a significant rain event. A 65,000 gal. electrical outage lag time (15-30 minutes before the mobile generator shows up) spill is nothing compared to the CSO that goes into the sound during a significant rain event. Check the CSO’s for Murray and Barton some time. We are talking millions of gallons, diluted much the same as this one likely was, which is about 10-20% sewage.

    What they should be building is massive CSO tanks underground somewhere low enough for gravity feed from Barton and Murray pumps stations during significant rain events. Instead, the County (not a city problem really) Wastewater Division wants to put in an underground back up diesel electrical generator in the park at Lowman Beach Park… slowly turning the park into an “industrial” site. Again, the priorities are all backwards. Lag time spills from electrical outages like this one are nothing, I mean NOTHING compared to the CSO spills from overwhelmed systems during a significant rain event.

  • Leroniusmonkfish October 16, 2009 (3:24 am)

    I was a CSO at a very large corporation Duckitude and not once did I let a “rain event” ruin our parade.

    But seriously, I will no longer set foot in Puget Sound nor will I buy shellfish, fish or associate with anyone that considers this cesspool habitable.

  • Duckitude October 16, 2009 (7:24 am)

    Leroniusmonkfish — I hear ya. I sailboard on the Sound off Lowman Beach, but never within 48 hours of a significant rain event. I have to tell you, I see so much trash in the sound most of the time.

    Eating something that grew up or stayed for any length of time in the sound… no way!

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