New equipment used for training to stop sewage spills

TRUCKEE - The equipment looks inconspicuous - thousands of feet of high-pressure hose coiled onto reels.

But the new emergency response gear, courtesy of a settlement over one of Lake Tahoe's largest sewage spills may save the lake from a future, catastrophic sewer leak.

Housed at the North Tahoe Public Utility District in Tahoe Vista, the nearly 4,000 feet of special hose will be available to agencies around the lake in a time of crisis, under a mutual aid agreement.

More than 50 employees from those agencies gathered last week to learn how the new gear works.

"This is a first," said Rob Hopkins, operations manager for the North Tahoe Public Utility District, of the hoses found nowhere else in the Tahoe Basin. "This is fairly new technology."

The hoses' success is in their simplicity. If a backhoe, pier pile driver or other machinery rips apart the high-pressure sewer main along Lake Tahoe's shore, the hose can be fitted to valves on either side of the rupture to form a makeshift bypass.

Before, the North Tahoe Public Utility District had a much more unwieldy method of bypassing a leak.

"We used 20-foot links of aluminum pipe they had to assemble by hand before," said Hopkins.

"It will be an order of magnitude faster than the system we had," said Hopkins.

For the Tahoe City Public Utility District, it offers an alternative to an often slow and messy alternative.

"Without this hose reel, it would pretty much dictate that we pump into trucks and haul it," said Bob Lourey, the general manager of the utility district. "We would be pretty limited without it."

The arrival of the new equipment signals closure in a sewage spill saga that began when an estimated 56,000 gallons of effluent flowed onto the beach and waters of Lake Tahoe at Kings Beach on July 19, 2005.

Marine contractor Pacific Built Inc., who punctured the pressurized sewer main while building a private pier along the lake, was involved in hearings for nearly a year following the spill.

Last summer, a settlement was reached that included buying the new equipment for the utility district.

Nearly $300,000 was set aside to buy the sewer line bypass equipment.

"There's a local benefit and an opportunity to hopefully reduce the response time and cut the volume of any future sewage spill," said Lauri Kemper, a division manager with the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board, which was involved in prosecuting the case.

The equipment purchase benefited Lake Tahoe more than a straight fine, parties said during the hearings, because money paid to the state water board would likely not be used locally in Lake Tahoe.

"I think it's a big advantage to all of the sewer agencies that have an opportunity to use it," said Lourey.