Region’s biggest sewage plant goes dark, spills 1.5m gallons, recovers most

Central Florida's largest sewage plant suffered a power outage Christmas afternoon that spilled an estimated 1.5 million gallons.

For the largest wastewater plant in Central Florida, Christmas brought what hurricanes Ian and Nicole didn’t, a complete power outage and enormous release of raw sewage.

Orange County’s South Water Reclamation Facility, a treatment plant on the south side of Sand Lake Road and next to Shingle Creek, spilled an estimated 1.5 million gallons, according to the county’s initial pollution report to the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Within several days, plant staff was able to confirm that none of the spill reached Shingle Creek, said Mike Hudkins, the county’ water reclamation division manager.

Though upgraded many times and receiving a major expansion last year, the plant’s power outage occurred with a cascade of troubles, including the failure of a critical device that controls electrical currents to equipment, a programmable logic controller, which prevented backup generators from kicking in.

“This incapacitated the influent pumps and other secondary equipment,” the initial report states. “Manholes throughout the facility overflowed.” Hudkins said power failures at the huge plant occur periodically and there are standard routines for restoring the flow of electricity to large pumps and other equipment.