From the city of Murfreesboro:

Quick response by department personnel and exemplary inter-departmental cooperation are being credited for keeping a sewage spill and resulting fish kill Aug. 1 from being far worse than it was.

It all began in the wee hours of Aug. 1 at the lift station along the horseshoe bend of Stones River adjacent to Old Fort Golf Course when an intense thunderstorm struck the area, a storm with frequent and spectacular lightning strikes, according to observers.

“Murfreesboro Water and Sewer Department (MWSD) responded to a call from a citizen that the river water near the bridge looked gray and dead fish were present,” the director said.  “The pump motors, including the backup emergency equipment, defaulted, possibly because of a lightning strike, and caused sewage to back up in the sanitary lines. Sewage eventually overflowed from a low manhole into the river near the bridge.”

Department personnel responded and quickly discovered why they hadn’t been notified  the overflow was occurring.

“The overflow was caused by multiple electrical malfunctions at the Old Fort Park Pumping Station adjacent to Old Fort Golf Course,” Kirchner said. “Department personnel quickly investigated, located the source and stopped the overflow.

Just what caused the malfunction remains speculative, he said, though there is strong suspicion lightning strikes probably played a significant role.

The indication was that the pumps were running so we didn’t think there was a problem, he said. “Since then if a storm of that type comes through, we put all our maintenance crew out visiting each facility and verifying everything is O.K.”

By this time, the director said, damage that included a fish kill had been done. It was time to think out of the box. It was decided to inject reprocessed water back into the river to mitigate the dissolved oxygen problem.

The director had nothing but praise for the inter-departmental cooperation that may have prevented the spill from causing even more damage.

“We posted signs the next Monday,” he said. “The golf course personnel were great. These guys did a great job. We have some really dedicated professional people. Believe it, they are just as worried about these overflows as the citizens are. They followed it along the stream to find the source. They followed it down stream to see how far it would have an effect.

“Parks and recreation helped a lot," Kirchner said. "On Sunday, concerned about it reaching the trailhead (Greenway) near the dam, we stationed a man there a whole day until that parking lot closed. The police department had its bicycle officers going up and down the greenway warning people to not go in the water. First thing Monday morning, we called the Tennessee Department of Environmental Conservation and they put their response in motion. We told them there had also been a fish kill so the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) came out.”

As with every unexpected accident, there were lessons learned, Kirchner said.

“I think the thing to take away from this was that the public was never in any danger,” he pointed out. “One thing we have done is to get our maintenance personnel brainstorming about how to create additional redundancy, he said. We’ve got redundancy in the telemetry on this but we are now putting in a float switch in so that if the power was to go out and the water level increase in the well it would notify us there’s a problem.

“It’s got a separate power source on it and a battery backup in case that goes out,” he said.