A 20-inch sewer force main behind broke, and officials speculate that heavy equipment caused the damage. Photo: County of Maui
Last week, 204,000 gallons of raw sewage poured out of a busted sewer main on Maui. Nearly 70,000 gallons of that flowed into the ocean.
According to The Maui News, authorities found the leak at on the morning of August 10th. Workers immediately got to work repairing it and had it patched up by 4 p.m. Unfortunately, before that happened, an estimated 68,000 gallons flowed over a dirt access road and directly into the sea. Workers were able to stop nearly 140,000 gallons by building a berm.
County crews repaired a 20-inch sewer force main. The work was completed at about 4 p.m. Thursday. Photo: County of Maui
Soon after, the Department of Health issued an advisory for people to stay out of the water from the Kahului Harbor breakwater to Linekona Street in Paukukalo.
When excavation work began to find out exactly where the leak was coming from, something fishy showed up. “It’s a clean, straight cut,” said Stewart Stant, director of the Department of Environmental Management, to The Maui News. “It’s not corrosion because we just put in this force main seven years ago. It definitely looks like someone hit it using heavy equipment and damaged it, and it wasn’t one of our crews.”
Some 20 tires were also found buried around the broken sewer main. Now, the Health Department is investigating. What that means, of course, is that someone broke the sewage main, then tried to hide it by burying tires all over it.
