It happened again folks. For the fifth time in six years, Plano has mistakenly spilled raw sewage into White Rock Lake.
A pump and motor failure was discovered at a manhole at 5510 W Plano Parkway occurred Thursday afternoon at around 2 p.m. When a crew arrived at the scene, the overflow was estimated at about 500 gallons per minute. By 6:15 p.m., over 100,000 gallons of raw sewage was leaked into White Rock Creek. It’s estimated that about 1.5 million gallons flowed into the lake in total.
North Texas Municipal Water District reported that a broken valve caused the initial disruption. The last incident in 2021, along with the previous two before it were caused by excessive rainfall.
Before this Thursday, there hadn’t been a sewage incident at the lake since.
“Our Environmental Health team checked the spill locations and the creek,” Stoler explains. The dissolved oxygen and pH levels are normal and no fish kills observed.”
The influx of raw sewage has prompted an indefinite pause for all activities on the water at White Rock Lake. Ralph Jones, Commodore of the Corinthian Sailing Club has postponed the club’s DF95 Blowout Regatta, an annual race that Jones says had more than 75 boats from around the country registered.
“I wouldn’t want to go in there, fall in there, or even pull a dead body out,” he says.
CORRECTION: On March 19, this story was corrected to include information about the North Texas Municipal District and to properly attribute the malfunction.
