Among the myriad breakdowns in infrastructure that can haunt a city, surely one of the worst is a major malfunction in its sewer treatment plant. By any standard, Tuesday’s breakdown was staggering.
An electrical outage that knocked eight sewage pumps off-line at the Moccasin Bend treatment plant caused an enormous backup of incoming waste. Resulting pressure on pipelines to the plant from downtown, in turn, caused massive overflows at three major points, and poured 137 million gallons of sewage into the Tennessee River.
Mayor Ron Littlefield called the spill “a tragedy.” His statement is on the mark.
One spill site, a manhole under the Market Street bridge, flooded the grounds of Coolidge Park. That prompted the mayor to promise, among other things, that the sod at the popular park would removed and replaced as soon as possible. Warnings went up elsewhere along the Riverwalk cautioning people about the spill and resulting contamination.
While City and state environmental officials made no attempt to downplay the spill, they noted that the massive volume of water that was being released by TVA from upriver dams following last Sunday’s heavy rains significantly diluted the sewage and mitigated its organic effect downstream.