City, County cited for raw sewage spills

Tuesday, Aug. 4, 1998 | 10:50 a.m.

The Nevada Division of Environmental Protection cited Clark County and the city of Las Vegas Monday for spilling raw sewage into the Las Vegas Wash, which leads to Southern Nevada's drinking water.

Local officials will meet with the Bureau of Water Quality, Joe Livak, enforcement branch supervisor, said. The state will then decide what penalties are appropriate. The county was cited for two violations and the city for one.

The Lake Mead Water Quality Forum, a group of federal, state and local water officials, are studying floods flowing from the Las Vegas Valley into the Las Vegas Wash to determine if people need warnings to avoid swimming in Las Vegas Bay after a flash flood.

The forum measured the waters for bacteria for the first time after a July 20 storm. The Southern Nevada Water Authority did not report a problem from the contaminated waters flowing into Lake Mead six miles upstream from two drinking water intake pipes.

About 4,000 gallons of sewage spilled from a manhole and entered the wash about 6:30 a.m. on July 20 as the county's East Las Vegas lift station failed to keep up with flooding in the area, the Clark County Sanitation District reported. About one gallon of raw sewage spilled for every 100,000 gallons of storm water in the channel.

The sanitation district received an alarm about 4 p.m. on July 9 after a severe thunderstorm struck the eastern valley. During that incident, about 2,000 gallons of sewage spilled into Duck Creek and the Las Vegas Wash.

The state is still investigating the 4.3 million gallons of treated flow discharged to the Las Vegas Wash from the city's water pollution control facility on July 9 after a power outage that lasted about 1 1/2 hours.

While city crews tried to follow an emergency plan to throw chlorine into the raw sewage to disinfect it, lightning striking at the plant made the outdoor operation impossible.

Concentrations of fecal coliform, indicating disease-causing bacteria, reached 1.42 million per 100 milliliters, five times the level of coliforms recorded in the Las Vegas Wash on July 20.

The city's treatment plant lost power for three hours on July 20, but officials did not report any sewage spills into the wash.