10,600 gallons of raw sewage dumps into Riviera Bay in St. Petersburg after pipe break
ST. PETERSBURG — Enough raw sewage to fill more than 250 bathtubs dumped into Riviera Bay over the weekend after a sewage line broke, prompting a multiday repair effort and road closures, according to St. Petersburg city officials.
Roughly 10,600 gallons of untreated wastewater poured into the bay bordering Weedon Island Preserve, an aquatic and upland ecosystem harboring scores of Florida plant and animal species. Now, crews have blocked off one lane of traffic as repairs are still underway, three days later.
A homeowner near the 8400 block of Tallahassee Drive NE first started smelling sewage on Thursday, according to a pollution notice filed to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. On Friday night, he saw water seeping out of the ground and emptying into the bay.
The man reported the spill and city crews responded to the area Friday night. While on scene, a cleanup crew vacuumed roughly 200 gallons of raw sewage before it entered the bay, but another 600 gallons dumped into the waterway that night.
A more detailed picture of the spill’s scale emerged by Sunday, when the city upped the total amount spilled to 10,000 gallons, according to city spokesperson Erica Riggins. That amount emptied into Riviera Bay on Saturday as crews tried to stop the flow from the 24-inch “old and in disrepair” pipe, using techniques like vacuum trucks and digging a pit lined with sandbags.
The pipe is no longer leaking dirty waste, and all captured sewage will be treated at a city wastewater facility, according to Riggins.
The city had plans to replace the roughly mile-long pipe in the 2025 budget year, but this weekend’s incident with the burst pipe is accelerating that plan to this year, according to John Palenchar, the city’s water resources director. The job could take two years to fully complete and could cost roughly $3 million.
Palenchar had a message for St. Petersburg residents Monday afternoon: “For the next day or so, please avoid water activities around Riviera Bay. We’re going to be sampling to make sure there are no harmful bacteria in the water, and we’ll be releasing those results.”
Those results will become available on the city’s recreational water quality map on its website, according to Palenchar.
While repairs were initially expected to be finished by Tuesday night, fixes are taking crews longer than expected and they won’t be complete by then, Riggins said. One lane of traffic on nearby San Martin Boulevard was shut down Sunday, but all lanes on that road have since reopened. One lane of Tallahassee Road still remains closed.
The city hoisted signs in the area warning the public to avoid contact with Riviera Bay until water quality testing is completed. A spokesperson for the state’s environmental agency said it’s currently looking into the spill, but couldn’t immediately confirm whether there would be penalties.
The bay’s proximity to Weedon Island Preserve makes it a popular destination for kayakers, paddleboarders and outdoor recreators.
This year has seen several large-scale sewage spills across the Tampa Bay Region. In April, a Duke Energy contractor hit a pipe and caused 45,000 gallons of treated wastewater to dump into Boca Ciega Bay. An estimated 630,000 gallons of raw sewage emptied into the Hillsborough River in January after Tampa Electric cut the power to an apartment complex’s wastewater lift station.
“This is one of the larger ones that we’ve had in the city in quite some time — but not particularly large in comparison with everything that we’ve been seeing,” Palenchar said.
