A broken sewer pipe outside of the LBJ Pump Station Wednesday night flooded the John F. Kennedy housing community and forced the Department of Public Works to again pump raw sewage over Long Reef into the Caribbean Sea.
According to Joe Bradford, acting director of utilities at Public Works, a pressurized 24-inch sewer line broke sometime Wednesday night in the area of the John F. Kennedy housing community. Because of the break, Public Works was unable to use the LBJ Pump Station to force the sewage uphill to the next pump station in the system along the way to a wastewater treatment plant near the Henry E. Rohlsen Airport.
To keep the sewage from flooding the nearby community, Public Works is using a temporary diesel pump to discharge approximately 1.2 million gallons a day of wastewater into the sea.
Acting Public Works Commissioner Wayne Callwood said it is anticipated that repairs to the broken pipe will be completed in "about two days."
The need to pump sewage over Long Reef is a setback for Public Works, which at the end of August finally got the beleaguered LBJ station operational after months of breakdowns and discharges into the sea. The repairs to LBJ and other parts of the wastewater system were done under order of U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Moore.
Moore, meanwhile, has ordered Public Works and other Turnbull administration officials to court on Oct. 20 to explain the government’s failure to comply with his repair orders. Although Public Works recently halted months of sewage discharges from the Figtree Pump Station, the repair is only temporary.
The main reason for the government’s "noncompliance is due to systemic financial and managerial delays," wrote Moore in the order he issued Tuesday. Because of the funding issue, he has called Commissioner of Finance Bernice Turnbull and Ira Mills, director of the Office of Management and Budget, to court to "justify why the necessary funds have not been allocated to the projects itemized in the Court’s previous orders."
Bradford said Public Works has been having trouble getting contractors to perform work because of the government’s lack of timely payment. But work on the broken line has already been started.
"Most contractors, in emergency situations, don’t have any problem with them doing the work," he said.
Moore’s recent orders are amendments to the original 1984 consent decree between the federal and the local governments aimed at bringing the territory’s wastewater treatment systems into compliance with the federal Clean Water Act.
Meanwhile, Department of Planning and Natural Resources Commissioner Dean Plaskett warned residents of the JFK community to avoid standing water, guts, puddles and drainage basins in the area. Furthermore, because of the discharges into the sea, he is advising the public to refrain from using the waters from the Christiansted Wharf to Golden Rock and outside Long Reef until the problem is corrected.
