Warning Issued After Sewage Spill

Town officials say a pipe broke at the sewage treatment plant on Creek Road in Huntington, but no raw sewage was discharged.
Photo/Town of Huntington

By Connor Beach

cbeach@longislandergroup.com

The Suffolk County Department of Health Services issued a precautionary advisory for Huntington Harbor Monday after a pipe broke at the Huntington Sewage Treatment Plant.

Suffolk County health officials said they were notified of the incident, which occurred early Nov. 17, resulting in an elevated discharge of total suspended solids into the harbor.

A county health department spokeswoman said the allowable levels of settleable solids for the sewage treatment plant discharge is 0.3 ml/L, and levels of 0.5 ml/L were measured on Saturday.

Huntington Director of Environmental Waste Management John Clark said Tuesday that the malfunction was the result of a broken pipe or coupling in one of the plant’s two Sequential Batch Reactor tanks contained within the plant on Creek Road in Huntington.

“There was no leak of sewage into the harbor,” Clark said. “All of the sewage continued to be treated as it normally does, but when we had this pipe break within our existing tank in a confined area of our sewer treatment pant, it caused us to have to do some processes manually.”

Clark said the broken pipe resulted in a higher percentage of particulate matter in the water before it was discharged, but “it’s not any bacteria that would hurt the harbor” because it had already been treated.

Officials from the Suffolk health department and the state DEC have inspected the plant since the malfunction and were happy with how the town responded, Clark said.

Clark said there is no clean up needed, and the plant will continue to manually perform functions in the effected SBR tank until the broken pipe can be repaired early next week.