The Coachella Valley Water District will pay a penalty of nearly $237,000 for its role in a 2020 sewage spill that discharged 128,000 gallons of raw wastewater into a Riverside County stormwater channel.
The penalty was announced by the State Water Control Board on Monday.
According to the agency, an investigation by the Colorado River Basin Regional Water Quality Control Board found that one of CVWD’s collection systems—Water Reclamation Plant No. 10—failed due to a power outage on Sept. 22, 2020. This caused it to release untreated wastewater from a manhole for about an hour.
The sewage, which spilled along a Palm Desert street near homes and businesses , contained high levels of pollutants and bacteria known to harm groundwater quality.
The district captured approximately 28,000 gallons of sewage with a vacuum truck, but 128,000 gallons spilled into the Whitewater River Stormwater Channel, an ephemeral stream that is also part of a flood protection system that runs from north of Palm Springs south to the Salton Sea.