News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
A brief power outage at Black Butte Ranch Tuesday, July 29, led to a 70,000-gallon sewage spill from a ranch lifting station into Indian Ford Creek.
It appears that the creek escaped any lasting harm from the spill, which occurred after the power interruption shut down a lifting station pump. However, signs were posted along the creek warning people to stay out of the water to avoid possible contamination.
According to Central Electric Co-op general manager Jim Crowell, the outage occurred at an "elbow" near the lift station at about 10:30 a.m. and was probably caused by lightning.
"We think it was lightning related, but we don't know that for 100 percent sure, and probably never will," Crowell said.
The outage lasted about 15 minutes.
"We didn't, in fact know there had been a power outage," Black Butte Ranch utilities manager Lynn Loundsbury said.
According to Loundsbury the lifting station pumps that boost flow along the ranch's gravity sewer lines shut down if the power is interrupted. This keeps the pump motors from burning out. The pumps don't have alarms and have to be manually reset.
The lifting station pump shut off, the sewage backed up out of a manhole near the station, and an estimated 70,000 gallons ran into one of the spring-fed branches that flows into the creek. Utility crews, noting that flow into the treatment station was unusually low, checked the stations Wednesday morning and discovered the spill.
Typically this type of malfunction wouldn't cause a spill," Loundsbury said, "but because we're in our high season, the system is running near capacity."
The creek "is not a huge receiving creek, so it's more than just a little, minor spill," Tom Hall of the Department of Environmental Quality told The Nugget.
Still, a number of factors mitigated the damage of the spill.
"There's a dilution factor there that probably saved the creek," said Sisters Ranger District biologist Mike Riehle.
As Loundsbury noted, the springs and creeks on the ranch are running very high for this time of year, and they provided heavy flows that helped dilute the spill. There is also a wetland area at the eastern edge of the ranch that may have absorbed and filtered the sewage.
"I think it's a safe bet that there might be processing there," Riehle said.
Black Butte Ranch will continue to monitor the creek for contamination at the creek's exit from the ranch, at Indian Ford Campground and in the Sage Meadow area.
For now, the creek will remain off limits for people, but its aquatic life has probably escaped harm.
"There's nothing to lead us to believe there's been a fish kill or anything," Riehle said. He noted, however, that he wasn't notified to test the stream until Thursday, so he couldn't say for certain what had been in the creek.
But, he said, with no foam, no odor, and no dead fish, the outlook is good.
"It's temporary," Riehle said. "It doesn't appear to be as significant as it might seem or you might first suspect."
Loundsbury said Black Butte Ranch is acting to make sure this kind of spill doesn't happen again.
Crowell said that CEC will contact the lodge at the ranch any time there is an outage so that ranch utilities personnel can be mobilized to check and reset the pumps.
Loundsbury said the ranch is also investigating installing telemetry devices on the sewage system that would alert utility workers at any hour if there were excessively high levels in the system.
Finally, Loundsbury said, the ranch will probably construct berms in areas where there is a danger of spills, so that utility crews have time to deal with any spills before they hit the stream.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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