About 400,000 gallons of sewage gushed into the Little Patuxent River after severe storms caused a power failure at the wastewater treatment plant in Savage.
The high winds and rain knocked out power at the two main independent power sources to the Little Patuxent Water Reclamation Plant.
For 28 minutes Wednesday afternoon, nothing was getting pumped through the station, said Public Works Director Jim Irvin.
“That?s never happened before,” Irvin said of the outages.
“There?s not much you can do.”
Two high-voltage feeds power the station, but the plant can operate on just one. However, if both fail, there is no storage for the sewage and it immediately overflows from the ground, said utilities chief Steve Gerwin.
About a half an hour was a “pretty amazing” response time for the outage, Gerwin said.
“We got it repaired fairly quickly,” he said.
Howard officials warnedresidents to avoid the area for 10 days.
However, because of the storm surge and high volume of water, the sewage could have been diluted, said Bert Nixon, director of the county?s Bureau of Environmental Health.
“It literally was swept away,” he said.
Even without the sewage overflow, the storm washed other debris and runoff into the river, so officials recommend avoiding the river after such a strong storm, Nixon said.
Howard officials plan to meet with Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. to ensure reliability of service, Irvin said.
“We don?t want to go through this ever again,” he said.
In January, 575,000 gallons of sewage overflowed in Laurel from a backup caused by fats, oils and grease clogging the pipes.
In 2007, nearly 113,000 gallons of sewage overflowed in Howard, caused by rainfall, grease, power failure, contractor error or roots, according to Maryland Department of the Environment data.
