Havelock Crews Dig to Find Cause for Saturday Sewage Spill

For the second time this month, crews here in the east are cleaning up a sewage spill.

Earlier this month, state officials found a seven-million gallon sewage spill in Onslow County.

Crews in Havelock spent all Monday cleaning up after 60,000 gallons of sewage spilled there.

As Nine On Your Side’s Philip Jones explains, quick work kept the environment from taking much of a hit this time.

It’s a smelly situation that has city workers stymied, as crews in Havelock work to figure out what caused 60,000 gallons of untreated wastewater to spill out on Saturday night.

It happened at the Westbrooke Shopping Center, where workers spent Monday literally digging for answers.

Contract crews have been working in this area for a while—ironically replacing aging infrastructure in hopes of preventing future sewage spills.

“Being proactive and being responsible stewards of the environment, we determined that it would be better for us to go in and make these repairs now before something actually happened,” said Pete Deaver, Havelock Public Utilities director. “During the course of those repairs is when this spill occurred, [though].”

Deaver says it’s unclear at this point whether the contractor’s repair efforts may have played a role in the spill.

Deaver adds that city of Havelock crews had the sewage leak stopped within 15 minutes of getting the call that there was a problem—and the state Division of Water Quality is crediting their quick work with keeping any of the sewage with reaching any shell fishing or recreational water areas.

In fact, only 10,000 gallons of sewage contacted state waters—and that happened when the sewage flowed into some roadside ditches.

All-in-all, both state and city officials expect the environmental impact to be minimal.

Deaver says city workers plan to use a vacuum truck to suck all the wastewater out of any drainage ditches.

They will then spread lime in the ditches to control the smell.