New Year's Eve at the beaver lodge

While i was up at the lodge behind KMart/Compare Foods on Avondale Drive taking these pictures, i caught a pretty good whiff of a smell that i recall strongly from my childhood, but that i don't notice much any more.

When i was a kid, my dad's work took him into all kinds of grocery stores, usually in the hours before they were open to the public. I'd go to work with him on occasion, entering the A&P from the back and walking through the frigid rooms with their pink, white, and grey sides of beef hanging from hooks, bright purple USDA stamps declaring that they had, in fact, been inspected by someone. There's a very particular smell that beef fat takes on after it's been trimmed from the carcass and discarded.

And that's what i smelled yesterday behind the Compare Foods. It took me a few minutes to track down the source.


this grey tinged water bubbling up from a sewer manhole behind the store, running a couple of gallons a minute into the beaver pond, seemed to be the culprit. Fortunately, when i went around to the front of the store to do my grocery shopping, i ran into a guy driving a Durham Water & Sewer maintenance truck, and told him about what i had found around back. Unfortunately, when i went back to the leak after doing my shopping, the guys from Neighborhood Improvement Services who were back there picking up old pallets told me that no one from Stormwater had come by. So i phoned it in to Durham One-Call. I'm going to head back there shortly to check if anyone from the city has stopped by.

In the meantime, it was also nice to see that the parking lot in front of KMart was getting put to good use.

Kevin reports that some leases have been signed for about half of the available space at KMart. I'm not sanguine that either the owners or the new tenants appreciate the natural beauty and significance of the area around that shopping center, but business is certainly preferable to vacancy, at this point.

UPDATE: Greasy water continues to bubble up behind the Compare Foods and into the beaver pond as of 5 pm New Year's Day.

My layman's guess is that we're looking at 2-3 gallons per minute.

I just spoke with someone at Water and Sewer who said that a crew did go out yesterday after i reported to One Call, and confirmed my suspicion that a grease trap is blocking the line and causing overflow, but that it's on private property and there's nothing else the city can do at this time except notify the owners that there's a problem.

Does that seem sufficient to anyone else? The water is definitely heading straight into the beaver pond.


UPDATE II: From the ECWA list:

As far as I know, that the beaver pond is public waters, and not privately owned, so you are right that makes a sewage spill a Clean Water Act violation. The NC Division of Water Quality is the place to report it. If the City has neglected to follow up on your report (they should have auto-dialers and emergency response even on a holiday), that should be even further reason for penalizing.

Here’s the number from DWQ’s website “to report an environmental emergency” (this counts!) 1-800-858-0368.

I would also recommend a follow up call to the Raleigh Regional Office, 919/791-4200, where they handle enforcement in Triangle area counties. Here’s a map: http://www.enr.state.nc.us/html/regionaloffices.html

They may have another emergency number, or just ask that the message be relayed to the Water Quality staff assigned to Durham County. Definitely ask that they call you back, so you’ll know that someone’s taking action! I’ll be glad to work with you later to follow up and see what action was actually taken.

That's from someone at Clean Water for NC.

I've called the state DWQ number and made sure they're aware of this. To be honest, "my work here is done." I (nor any other citizen who deals with local issues like these) should have to make it a part-time job to follow up with various agencies making sure that stuff likes this gets taken care of. That's why we pay our public servants salaries.