17 million gallons of sewage a day flowing into Chesapeake Bay

BALTIMORE COUNTY - If you think looking at a pool of raw sewage is nasty...

"It was bad, it was very overwhelming. It will make your eyes water."

While Susan Lint lives directly behind it, she is far from the only one who heard and smelled the problem late Sunday night.

"All of a sudden you heard a rush of a noise, it sounded like a lot of wind but there was no wind. And then my husband and I were outside and we came up and looked. It sounded horrible, it started smelling horrible and there's a 20 foot river flushing out the back of the yard over here," said Baltimore Highlands resident Julie White.

Today the sewage still flows, the result Baltimore County’s Department of Public Works says of a break in a 54 inch sewage main.

The county believes it was because of some sort of power surge from the pumping station just down the road but they don't know if that was caused by Hurricane Irene, the earthquake...or both.

[How many gallons of raw sewage are pumping out of this?] The line normally holds about 17 million gallons a day, that is the general flow," said DPW spokesperson David Fidler.

A flow now flowing into a nearby river feeding the harbor and eventually the Chesapeake Bay.

DPW says there is no way to shut it down until crews get it fixed.

"There's nowhere for it to go,” said Fidler. “It is the main conduit for all of the effluent for the western side of the county. It is between a third and half of all the flow; a population of 800 thousand."

The county says it should be repaired no later than Friday.

In the meantime signs have gone up warning of contamination.

"it smells horrible here. It smells toxic. It can't be good for any of us that live in the community. It really can't," said White.

A warning that cannot protect the residents here or nearby waterways.

DPW says the pre-stressed concrete cylinders used to lay that sewage line 30 years ago may be connected to a batch produced in the 1970's known now to fail.
The county says it just spent 16 million dollars to rebuild that pumping station on Annapolis road two years ago and do not believe there is any danger of sewage backing up into homes.