A sewage spill that began Sunday afternoon by Oleta River might not be stopped until Friday as Miami-Dade launches a 24-hour underwater repair operation on a pipe that the county had planned to replace within two years.
The leak of raw human waste comes from a 48-inch pipe that runs 12 feet under the Oleta in the middle of the state park that carries the river’s name. It carries sewage from the Sunny Isles Beach area to the North District Wastewater Treatment Plant.
While most spills in Miami-Dade’s problematic sewer system get halted within hours, county administrators said they’d have to suspend sewer service to nearby cities in order to fix this rupture immediately. “We can’t shut off the line,” said spokeswoman Jennifer Messemer-Skold. “If we do, we’re stopping wastewater flowing west from Sunny Isles Beach, Golden Beach and the Eastern Shores in North Miami Beach.”
Read more at our news partner the Miami Herald.
