Sewage discharge into the Rio Grande ends 4 months after initial pipeline break
No more toilet jokes: the pipes are fixed and Westside El Paso’s waste is flowing to a water treatment plant instead of into the Rio Grande riverbed — but some serious cleanup remains.
As of Tuesday, the John T. Hickerson Water Reclamation Facility is fully operational, cleaning the average 10 million gallons of water produced daily from toilets, drains and showers from 17,500 homes, said Gilbert Trejo, El Paso Water chief operations officer.
“We are in the stage that we are no longer discharging to the river,” Trejo said. “But we remain in the testing and commissioning phase, just to make sure that the pipeline and the treatment plant are operating as they should.”
El Paso Water diverted more than 1.1 billion gallons of sewage into the Rio Grande for four months following the catastrophic failure of dual steel mains in August. The utility said the river was the only body of water that could contain the spill to keep wastewater from backing up into streets and homes.
Read more: https://elpasomatters.org/2022/01/11/sewage-discharge-into-the-rio-grande-ends-4-months-after-initial-pipeline-break/
