Power outage causes sewer discharge at Ocean Beach
Photo: Tom Prete / Ocean Beach Bulletin
UPDATE 10:25 a.m. March 18: Tests of water from Ocean Beach showed that bacteria counts have fallen since sewage spills Friday and Saturday, and on Sunday morning officials removed warnings against contact with the water.
Six samples taken along Ocean Beach and Fort Funston Saturday showed bacteria counts within state standards when tests were completed, according to an email from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission sent at 9:48 a.m. Sunday.
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UPDATE 3:55 p.m. March 17: A sewer spill at Ocean Beach means officials have warned against contact with the water at all areas of Ocean Beach and Fort Funston until at least Sunday.
According to an email from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission at 3:03 p.m. Saturday, the discharge of a combination of stormwater and partly treated wastewater ended Saturday morning. But signs advising the public against water contact will remain posted until the SFPUC can complete bacteriological tests on water samples collected Saturday morning. The earliest that could happen is Sunday morning.
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A power outage Friday night, accompanied by heavy rain, sent partly treated wastewater into the waters of Ocean Beach at three locations.
According to an email alert from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, the outage cut power to pumps that move stormwater and wastewater. In San Francisco’s wastewater-treatment system, the two types of water are combined before being treated and then discharged — in the case of the waste from western neighborhoods, about four miles offshore in the Pacific Ocean.
Without pumping power, the system discharged a combination of stormwater and wastewater near Lincoln Way, Vicente Street and Lake Merced. All of Ocean Beach and the Fort Funston will be posted with warnings against contact with the water.
According to a message on a PG&E Twitter account, Friday night’s outage affected about 5,800 of the utility’s customers starting at about 8:11 p.m. Another tweet stated that power was restored at about 9:39 p.m.
The SFPUC maintains a website with updated information about water quality, as well as a water-quality hotline: 1-877-732-3224.
@4oceans, @Sunset mom – Those are great questions. We’ll try to follow up on them. Unfortunately, like everyone else we have a million and one things to do, families to feed, almost no time and almost no money. If you know anyone who might want to advertise on or sponsor the Bulletin, please encourage them to do so. We want to give our community a great news source, but it’s expensive and time-consuming.
That said, at the very least we’ll definitely inquire about the volume of the discharge, and report what we find out.
How much sewage was dumped?
This is NOT ok. How is it possible that there is no backup plan to prevent this? What if there was a big catastrophe like an earthquake? There should be at the very least a backup generator in place to keep this from happening.