Clear Lake community concerned about long-term impacts of sewage spill
By John Ramos
As of Tuesday, some residents in the northern town of Clear Lake were still under a local emergency declaration due to a sewage spill.
One rural neighborhood had evacuated homes with an order not to drink or use water for any purpose.
“I look outside, and it’s a river,” said Robin Lane homeowner Cassandra Hulbert. “It is actively flowing. It’s not a trickle, it’s a river. And yesterday was even worse than the day before. So, it was getting increasingly worse.”
Cassandra Hulbert and her husband Harold took pictures and videos of what they were seeing. It showed a brown torrent of untreated sewage water gushing past their house from a broken pipe at the end of the street. Felipe Godinez lives across the street, but on the lower side of the road, and his backyard filled with the stinking effluent.
“My neighbor called me and said, ‘Hey man, there’s water running through your backyard,” said Godinez. “So, when I came out, this was flooded. And I was like, it’s a water line? He goes, ‘Yeah, but it’s not just water.'”
The residents said the sewage continued to gush for two full days. A crew was still working on the ruptured pipe on Tuesday, but the flow had stopped, and by the afternoon, the neighborhood was full of septic trucks, vacuuming up pools of standing water from yards and the street.
And workers began dusting the road with agricultural lime powder to kill bacteria. The runoff from the spill flowed into Burns Valley Creek and then into Clear Lake. The county health department said water in the enclosed public system is still safe to use, but they are advising anyone who develops symptoms like cramps, diarrhea or dehydration to seek medical help.
No one from the Lake County Special District, which operates the treatment plant, would go on camera but they did issue a warning to the homeowners.
“We were instructed not to drink water. Not to boil the water. Do not use the water at all,” said Cassandra Hulbert.
“This is muddy poop water,” said Harold Hulbert. “And muddy poop mud that they’re creating out here that’s going to dry. And then once it dries, and people do 50 miles per hour down here again, that dust is going to be poop dust.”
More than 50 homes are affected, and most of the neighbors have evacuated to hotels.
The problem is that most get their water from wells, so the residents are concerned about possible contamination of the underground water table.
The Hulberts said, considering how long it took to stop the leak, they don’t have a lot of faith in the district. They said when the cleanup is completed, they will be hiring an independent company to test the neighborhood wells before using the water again.
