MELBOURNE, Fla. – The city of Melbourne recommends residents keep themselves and their pets out of the Eau Gallie River and not eat fish caught there, after a construction accident Tuesday resulted in a broken sewer pipe leaking an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 gallons of raw sewage into the river.
Officials said Thursday that the leak, which started two days earlier, has been contained, with waste now flowing into a nearby retention pond, according to News 6 partner Florida Today.
Engineers are working on a plan to cut and replace the damaged section of the pipe.
"We do not have an estimated timeframe for when this will be completed," officials said.
Sewage started flowing toward the river Tuesday afternoon when a construction mishap underneath the Eau Gallie River allowed the wastewater to spill. It is the most recent in a series of unrelated sewage spills to plague Brevard County’s waterways in recent months.
The latest incident happened at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday as a Melbourne city contractor was drilling beneath the river to install a new 20inch water main. The worker instead ruptured a 16-inch wastewater main, causing the sewage to spill.
The contractor on the project is CORE Engineering & Construction, Inc., of Winter Park.
It was not immediately known how many gallons of raw sewage leaked into the river, which flows to the Indian River Lagoon. Melbourne officials said they had yet to reach the broken pipe late Tuesday afternoon or calculate the rate of flow.
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection was called to the scene, and an assessment of the damage and the spill is ongoing.
The city planned to put steel plates into the hole to fend off erosion to make the hole secure, fix the broken pipe and pump more sewage into the nearby pond.
Some of the raw sewage flowed through nearby trees, grass and weeds.
"Luckily, it's a pretty good distance to the open water," said Harold C. Nantz, Melbourne's assistant public works and utilities director.
Nantz said the raw sewage diverted to the pond would be pumped into a nearby manhole or into a truck to haul it to the treatment plant.
"We can't really figure that out until we see what it is," Natz said when asked for an estimated range of volume spilled.
The city had located the sewage main before the project began but the location information was not as precise as it is for newer pipes.
"Unfortunately, this one is about 15 to 20 years old," he said of the pipe.
City bacteria tests were pending, and officials said they were reviewing whether any warning signs would be necessary along the river.
In September, beachside residents between the Pineda Causeway and Eau Gallie were asked to restrict usage after a sewer main burst, sending more than 1.33 million gallons of raw wastewater into the ground and nearby canals that feed into the Indian River Lagoon.
Earlier in May, another sewer line break led to the leakage of more than a million gallons of wastewater into a canal leading to the Indian River Lagoon. Environmental experts say such spills can leave behind a host of problems for the waterways, including oxygenchoking algae blooms and harmful pathogens.