After more than 90 years trout and salmon in the River Ely in Wales England were able to spawn due to the water quality improvements. Unfortunately, last week so much raw sewage was dumped into the river that all of the mature and spawning fish were all killed. Construction worker Greg Davies , 31, of Tonyrefail said: "The outlet has been pumping litres and litres of stinking raw sewage straight into the Ely since Friday killing every single thing in it. It's wiped out every living thing in the river from fish to insect life which is a tragedy when you consider the river has only just cleaned up enough to attract trout and salmon par back here after 90 years. I counted over 560 fish suffocated to death in the poisoned water. We couldn't save any of them. We couldn't rouse anyone to tackle it until Sunday and then only because the Ely runs through the grounds of the Royal Glamorgan Hospital. It has taken six years to restore the river since the closure of the paper mill and the removal of the weirs and now this - it's an environmental and public health disaster for the river." Another example of a sad and disppointing opportunity lost.

And Now the Spills of the Week:

What Smell?: It's a smelly, disgusting health hazard for residents living in a Winter Park apartment complex, who say a sewage pipe burst creating a horrible smell and unhealthy situation. They said they couldn't even turn on their air conditioners because it would suck the disgusting smell into their homes. "Toilet paper, feces, everything," said James Alexander, an Azure Park resident. "It took me and my roommate going to the office and threatening to call the health department." When Channel 9 tried to talk to management at Azure Park it seemed that no one knew exactly what was going on. They said " Huh?"
- May 20, 2008: wftv.com - Orlando, FL

Antique Infrastructure: The Department of Public Works hopes to get a better handle on how to repair a ruptured sewer main that dumped approximately 90,000 gallons of sewage into the Westfield River in Springfield, MA. The leak, discovered by a fisherman last Thursday, was apparently caused by "a shift in the river channel caused by bank erosion which in turn exposed and undermined the pipe," Public Works Superintendent John P. Stone said in a prepared statement. A pair of pipelines at the site - including a 10-inch pipe installed in 1939 and a 20-inch pipe installed in 1959 - normally carry about 900,000 gallons of the city's daily sewage flow of 3.3 to 3.4 million gallons under the riverbed to the Bondi Island Treatment Plant.
- May 20, 2008: The Republican - Springfield, MA

Leakage Lagoon: City wastewater officials have determined more than one million gallons of sewage leaked from a pipe that split open near Columbia, TN. The bottom of a plastic pipe burst, spewing out 739,000 gallons of untreated sewage onto the road near the city's new multi-million dollar wastewater lagoon system. Another 658,000 gallons of partially treated wastewater flowed back from the lagoon for a total of 1.4 million gallons of sewage, enough to fill two Olympic-size swimming pools to the brim. The spill lasted for about eight hours and created a river of sewage about a half mile long before collecting in a field near Tennessee Aluminum Processors.
- May 21, 2008: The Daily Herald - Columbia, TN

Welcome Home: English Muffin Way resident Dave Snow from Frederick, MD came home last week to find sewage gushing into his yard for the second time this spring. The manhole on his property is one of the lowest in the area, and whenever there is a sewage overflow, his is the most likely to blow it's top. In March, sewage overflowed into his yard because too few county wastewater pumps were turned on. Then, last week, heavy rains caused sewage to overflow throughout the Mid-Atlantic. Roughly 180,000 gallons flowed onto Snow's and a neighbor's properties and spilled into the Monocacy River. Unreal.
- May 21, 2008: The Frederick News-Post online - Frederick, MD

Thirsty??: A sanitary sewer manhole overflowed in the northern part of Hanover, PA last week, causing liquid sewage to run into a tributary of the south branch of Conewago Creek, which New Oxford Borough uses as drinking-water source. Hanover Borough officials called the state to report the overflow, said Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection spokesman John Repetz. Heavy rains last week, which dropped about 2 inches of rain in Hanover, caused the sewer to overflow. "We put straw around the manhole to contain the overflow," Rebert said. Straw? That's your answer to a thousands of gallons of sewage overflowing? "But it did saturate the ground and got into the wetlands." Some of the liquid from the sewer line got into Slagle Run, which is a secondary water source for the borough and feeds into the Conewago Creek, a primary water source for New Oxford. Drink Up!
- May 22, 2008: Evening Sun - Hanover, PA