ORLANDO, Fla. — Days after Ian’s last gusts, the Orlando region’s sewage systems are fighting to recover and losing ground in many cases, swamping homes with wastewater, sending streams across roads without warning and pouring untold thousands of gallons into lakes.
Orlando leaders have warned that people should stay out of every city lake as a precaution and should “severely limit water usage until further notice.” That could be for at least a week.
As people return to Fort Myers to pick up the pieces after Hurricane Ian, some are finding that harder than others.
“Minimize your bathroom trips, minimize showers, minimize washing your hands, minimize running the dishwasher, minimize all of these things that are adding to our sanitary sewer system,” said Corey Knight, Orlando’s public works director.
The combination of power outages and the influx of flood waters into sewer systems amounts to the worst nightmares of operators coming true, with nearly every facet of their sewage systems battered or enormously overwhelmed.
According to state reports so far available, Orlando’s sewage system, the region’s largest, likely represents the turmoil occurring with many other systems.
Sewage systems are comprised of small and large pipes that span nearly every street of their service areas and steadily combine into fewer and fewer pipelines. It’s almost impossible for ordinary residents to have any idea where their sewage flows and what disruptions may be downstream.
By Sunday afternoon, the city of Orlando had closed Mills Avenue along the stretch in front of the city’s art museum, where sewage gushed from one of the city’s biggest pumping stations and pipelines.
A steady procession of tanker trucks with vacuum hoses were intercepting some of the waste water flowing to Lake Estelle and also potentially into Lake Rowena.
Along Winter Park’s Lakemont Avenue just west of Winter Park High School, water was gushing out of a manhole cover and from pipes used for cleaning the sewer lines of individual homes.
The water had the unmistakable soapy, organic stench of waste water, and where it ran into and ponded in adjoining yards, the liquid settled into a black slime layered with wisps of white film.
Residents have pleaded for relief from the city.
“They just keep telling us it will be off when it is off,” said Debbie Pappas, whose backyard and children’s play set have been flooded with the runoff.
Ian has caused widespread failures and spills with Orlando area sewage systems. Winter Park resident Debbie Pappas has seen her yard fill with sewage from an ongoing spill on Lakemont Avenue.
Another resident, Greg Bartel, has had both his front and back yards swamped. “I’m thinking that we need to file a lawsuit,” Bartel said. “This is more than a little bit ridiculous.”
On the other side of Longmont, resident Jon Edelman reported the ongoing spill to the state. The city also is required to make that report but one has not turned up yet in documents provided by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
“City of Winter Park is allegedly pumping storm water thru the sanitary system, which is not designed for that high of a pressure,” Edelman reported. “The ensuing pressure and volume has caused multiple pipe breaks and wastewater spills, including water spraying from multiple manhole covers in the street.”
Apparently unaware that the fountain of water was coming from a sewage manhole, a steady volume of motorists and even cyclists splashed through it.
According to documents submitted to the state Department of Environmental Protection, system operators have resorted to submitting spreadsheets, as opposed to individual reports, to detail the time, volume and responses for failed lift stations.
Those are pumps in a variety of sizes in nondescript buildings that move sewage from homes and neighborhoods to increasingly large pipelines that tie into treatment plants.
Orlando has nearly 200 lift stations. Among its biggest are stations 1, 2 and 3, which were disrupted by the breakage of a 36-inch diameter pipe that connects those three.
Operators of several systems have reported that major pipelines have cracked open because of the increased pressure to move exceedingly high volumes of sewage.
Typically, operators are able to calculate spill amounts. But with Ian’s assault, many are stating “unknown.”
Perhaps the most telling facts of the sewage emergency are conditions at treatment plants.
The region’s biggest plant, Orlando’s Iron Bridge Water Pollution Control Facility near the University of Central Florida, was swamped by both Ian’s rains and by inflows of wastewater.
The plant normally handles 30 to 32 million gallons daily. Its rated capacity is 40 million gallons. Its peak volume so far because of Ian was 78 million gallons in a day.
Elsewhere in the city, the Conserv 1 plant normally handles 5.5 million gallons daily, is rated for 7.5 million and peaked at 11.5 million at noon Saturday. The Conserv 2 plant normally treats 18 to 20 million gallons daily, is rated for 25 million and at 10 a.m. Sunday hit 48 million gallons.
The Iron Bridge and Conserv 2 plants have had numerous overflows that have contaminated soils and retention ponds but have not escaped the plant sites, according state reports.
With Hurricane Irma in 2017, also a very wet storm but not on the scale of Ian, it took months for the full enormity of spills across the state’s peninsula to become apparent through state reports.
While Ian’s reports have only just begun, the picture they provide tells of failures and spills ranging from those at mobile home parks, at privately run treatment plants and at the biggest systems in Central Florida.
Orange County’s system had numerous overflows from manholes, including from four manholes near the Hunter’s Creek community. “The discharge flowed on the pavement surface and might have entered the storm water system. Recovery actions are in progress,” the county reported.
Casselberry reported a spill of 108,000 gallons of partly treated sewage, explaining its treatment plant had exceeded its capacity.
Late Sunday afternoon, a manhole along Shine Street in Orlando’s Colonialtown South burbled softly with emerging liquid. Carrying a rusty-red foam, part of the flow diverted east along a gutter of Mount Vernon St.
Some of the waste water went south along Shine, turned into gutter along Amelia Street near the YMCA and disappeared into a storm drain.
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