SALEM - A check of a Salem pump station
apparently showed everything was working
fine the same week it spilled a half-million
gallons of raw sewage into the Willamette
River.

But city officials have not been able to
determine the last time workers checked two
alarm systems that malfunctioned after the
Sept. 15 spill, delaying its discovery for
nearly two days. The overflow started around
midnight and was undetected until last Sunday
afternoon, when a resident reported sewage
bubbling up from a manhole cover. Unsafe
levels of E. coli bacteria were detected
in a two-mile stretch of the river. By last
Friday, a week after the accident, they were
close to safe.

Sewage overflows are the biggest public
health threat on Oregon's rivers. Last year,
Salem reported spills to DEQ of 127 million
gallons.

Register Guard

have not been able to
determine the last time workers checked two
alarm systems that malfunctioned after the
Sept. 15 spill

Probably sometime in 1999 :-'

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), September 25, 2000