1.45 Million Gallons of Sewage Discharged Into Buffalo Creek

The City of Greensboro announced that approximately 1.45 million gallons of untreated wastewater spilled into South Buffalo Creek on Wednesday.

According to the city, the discharge lasted over 6 hours due to a power and generator failure that was complicated by extreme flows caused by heavy rain.

The city said no environmental impacts were observed or are expected as heavy rains caused very high flows in the creek before and after the discharge.

Last November, heavy rains caused sewage spills in three Piedmont cities. Greensboro had four sewage spills, with the largest near Henderson Road where 4,000 gallons of untreated sewage spilled into North Buffalo tributary of the Haw River Basin. In High Point, 3,000 gallons overflowed into Richfork Creek and in Burlington, 500,000 fallons overflowed onto Boywood Road, which flows into the Haw River.

In January, 168,000 gallons of sewage spilled from six sites in Thomasville, with the most, 27,000 gallons, spilling from a Concord St. manhole into a tributary of North Hamby Creek. Last September, a sewage spill that was originally reported as 15.9 million gallons was later reduced to an estimate of around 4.6 million gallons.