Millions of gallons of sewage spill into Lake Monroe
More than 5 million gallons of partially-treated sewage — enough to nearly fill 11 Olympic-sized swimming pools — flowed into Mills Creek and Lake Monroe on Saturday after a malfunction at a Sanford wastewater treatment plant, according to a city report filed with the state.
Sanford officials posted signs on the RiverWalk pedestrian trail that runs along the southern shoreline of Lake Monroe warning the public to stay out of the water and not to fish because of potentially high bacteria levels.
“Exposure to water may cause illness,” read the signs that were in place Monday as joggers and bicyclists passed by. It’s not clear how long the ban will remain in place.
The overflow was caused after high amounts of wastewater coming into the plant on West Seminole Boulevard overloaded the filters that remove solid matter, according to the report sent Sunday to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
Sewage then flowed intermittently into nearby Mills Creek, which runs north from the Goldsboro community into Lake Monroe, just east of Mangoustine Avenue.
Richard Casella, a utility manager for Sanford’s water and wastewater plants, said in an email to the Sentinel that work crews spent Monday cleaning the filters and started “making adjustments to the plant process” to help stop the wastewater overflow and prevent another one.
Lake Monroe is a bloated portion of the St. Johns River, a slow-moving 310-mile waterway that flows north from Indian River County near Vero Beach before emptying into the Atlantic Ocean in Duval County near Jacksonville.
Sanford has long struggled with an aging wastewater system that is ill-equipped to handle a growing population, officials said.
In February 2023, Sanford commissioners agreed during an emergency meeting to spend at least $1 million to repair the city’s wastewater system after Hurricane Ian, Tropical Storm Nicole and other rainy weather events in late 2022 overwhelmed the decades-old infrastructure and caused sewage to flow into downtown streets and back up into homes.
City staff said at the time that dozens of new restaurants, breweries and businesses that have opened in recent years have overwhelmed the wastewater and storm water infrastructure built in the 1960s.
