Sewage Pipe Breaks: Waste Flows Into Mississippi River

Source: Omaha World-Herald Publication date: Feb 15, 2000

Iowa

An estimated 700,000 gallons of waste water entered the Mississippi River near Muscatine last week before city workers fixed a break in a 24-inch sewage pipe.

The break was discovered Thursday morning when waste water washed up on a city street near the Heinz food-processing plant.

"Although this is a large volume of waste water, the leak poses little threat to downstream users," said Terry Jones, an environmental specialist from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources' Washington, Iowa, field office.

"The waste water was about 90 percent byproducts of the Heinz plant and about 10 percent domestic waste," Jones said.

Because of the time of year, few people will be using the river. Jones said the biggest risk is to fish and aquatic organisms.

"We have a fisheries biologist inspecting the river, and he says there doesn't appear to be any impact or any dead fish," he said.

City workers dug up portions of the street to expose a broken pipe, then built a dike of sandbags in an attempt to contain the waste water.

The workers pumped pooled waste water to a nearby sanitary sewer and installed couplings around the pipe by Friday afternoon.

Publication date: Feb 15, 2000 ) 2000, NewsReal, Inc.

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