Roughly 10.3 million gallons of raw sewage poured into the Ohio River Wednesday.
It all started midday when a major pipeline failed forcing the contamination into the river. MSD worked for more than 10 hours to repair the pipeline but still wants people to stay away from the river downstream from the McAlpin Dam for the next 3 days.
Crews fixed the problem around 10 o'clock Wednesday night, and Louisville’s water supply was never affected by the contamination because the water intake is upstream from the problem.
Louisvillian Edwinna Basey enjoys Chickasaw Park for its scenery and its great views of the Ohio River. What Edwinna can't see, though, we could see from Sky 11, and it's no pretty sight.
"It's raw sewage. It's anything anybody has flushed, that comes out of their shower, their sink, their tub, their toilet. A little bit of everything," explained Brian Bingham with MSD.
The sewage began pouring into the Ohio River around noon Wednesday and continued hour by hour dumping hundreds of thousands of gallons of waste. It’s all because something went wrong along one of the two major sewage lines running to MSD's wastewater treatment plant.
“We were working on one of those gates and it broke and fell and closed. It's one that never gets all the way closed but it fell and closed totally," Bingham told us.
The failure pushed the waste into the river and put MSD crews to work with a crane, trying to get things flowing again the right way.
It also put people like Edwinna on alert to stay away from the contaminated water. "I heard, I have heard that this had happened and it's pretty bad. It's real bad. I think it's terrible," Edwinna said.
MSD will pay the price for this, facing tens of thousands of dollars in fines from state and federal regulators.
MSD still doesn't know why the gate broke, but whatever the reason, it means people and pets should stay away from the contaminated water for the next 3 days.
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