Whitewater on Weracoba Creek?

Whitewater isn’t always a good thing.

For example, a Concerned Reader named Ted called to complain that someone had recently done something to Weracoba Creek as it meanders alongside Cherokee Avenue near the Country Club of Columbus.

Ted likes to feed the small fish that inhabit the creek from his yard, which overlooks the creek. But recently, he noticed the water was milky white instead of its usual clear state. And he noticed his fish were nowhere to be seen. He called the city and they tested the water and said there was nothing toxic, and suspected that some n’er-do-well house painter had dumped some excess white latex paint either in the creek or down a nearby storm drain, which of course drains directly into the creek.

Ted said this wasn’t the first time it’s happened, and he suspects it won’t be the last.

With the recent rains we’ve had, the creek is back to its clear condition and the paint, if that’s what it was, must be around Eufaula by now. But Ted says his fish haven’t returned to their swimming grounds.

“They’re gone,” Ted said.

I called Michael Burgess, who is the stormwater programs manager for the city’s Engineering Department. He confirmed that it probably was paint that someone had (illegally) dumped, and it wasn’t the first time.

Burgess said a woman in the neighborhood was having her house painted when her dog knocked over a five-gallon bucket of white paint and she, thinking she was doing the right thing, hosed it all down a drain in her yard.

“It didn’t turn the creek milky white,” Burgess. “It was solid white.”

Apparently she thought she was doing the right thing, Burgess said. “She was mortified when she realized what she had done.”

She had thought that the drain would flow into the sanitary sewer line and on to the water treatment plant before being released back into the river.

What she had done, again, was illegal, but first offenders usually get off with a warning, Burgess said. But repeat offenders can be issued a summons to appear in Environmental Court, which is held periodically in Recorder’s Court. There, they can be fined up to $1,000 a day for repeated offenses.

Burgess urges anyone who sees such pollution in the creek to call the city’s 311 Citizen Services Center, which will report it to him.

Now, common sense should tell you not to dump stuff like paint down a storm drain, but such sense just isn’t as common as it once was. But to make it even clearer, the city has affixed small blue sign-plates to storm drains all over the city. They state very clearly, “No Dumping. Drains to creek.” And it has an image of one of Ted’s fish leaping from the water. The blue water. Not whitewater.

This story was originally published December 4, 2016 at 6:48 PM with the headline "Whitewater on Weracoba Creek?."