Today is Friday the 13th but consider how lucky the river lovers in Albuquerque feel, thanks to the heroics of one San Juan County employee. James Netcher showed extreme dedication to his job and frank disregard for his own health and safety by jumping into and wading through a pool of raw sewage to make repairs to a faulty valve at the wastewater treatment where he works. This brave, albeit pretty disgusting, act saved the San Juan River.

For his selfless and dangerous act, which averted a serious and expensive environmental catastrophe, the county commissioners awarded him a certificate of appreciation. The best part of the story is Netcher's apparent nonchalance about the whole thing. After jumping in the nastiness and saving the day, the guy just goes home, showers, and works an overtime shift at the County Fair. Heroes never smelled so good.

And now for the Spills O' the Week:

A new poo record: Initial estimates of the size last week's sewage spill in Carlsbad California were just a little off, but only by 2 million gallons! The reason for the new figure is because initial reports didn't include an entire day of run-off that occurred the day before the spill was officially reported. At least 1,700 fish were killed by the spill and more than 34 million gallons of contaminated water are being pumped out of the lagoon to an area sewage treatment plant.
- April 11, 2007 San Jose Mercury News, San Jose, CA

Foul-Air Beach: A mechanical failure that trapped air in a valve caused a 9,000-gallon sewer spill in a neighborhood near the west end of the Belleair Causeway in North Pineallas County, Florida. The untreated sewage flowed into the Tampa-St. Petersburg's stormwater system and eventually out into the Intracoastal Waterway.
- April 11, 2007 St. Petersburg Times, St. Petersburg, Florida

Shellfish or smellfish? The Great Salt Bay Sanitary District in Lincoln County Michigan announced that in the process of conducting repairs to a drain a "small" amount of raw sewage spilled into the Damariscotta River. What exactly constitutes "small" is not disclosed but it was large enough amount that officials issued a warning and closed the area to shellfish harvesting.
- April 11, 2007 Lincoln County News, Lincoln County, MI

Old Filthful: Every time the families living on Skytop Drive in Dupont, PA do the dishes, take a shower, flush a toilet, or in any way run water down the drain raw sewage gushes out of manhole in the middle of their street. Plumbers have determined the problem rests outside of the residents' homes. Neither the Borough of Dupont nor the Lower Lackawanna Sewer Authority is assuming responsibility for the problem - to the chagrin of the folks living with sewage in their yards.
- April 11, 2007 The Times-Leader, Wilkes-Barre, PA

Porta-John Island: The residents of Demi-John Island are looking at having to pay $1,000 for every day their community continues to dump raw sewage into Bastrop Bayou. The 450 unit community has been illegally discharging raw sewage for several days and state officials are getting serious about forcing Demi-John Island to clean-up its mess.
- April 9, 2007 The Brazoport Facts, Clute, TX

Spill-it Lake: About 30,000 gallons of raw sewage dumped into Spirit Lake in Northern Idaho over the course of five days. The spill was discovered in the town of Spirit Lake on Monday "when raw sewage was found running out of a vent hole on a manhole cover...The agency was notified of the spill immediately but it was not reported publicly until Friday when the city had determined its size," which was presumably growing all week.
- April 7, 2007 The Olympian, Olympia, WA