NORTH East Water has rejected claims that six million litres of sewage spilled into the Murray River at Wodonga as a result of rain on Thursday.
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Instead, the water authority says less than one megalitre of storm-water was flushed into Wodonga Creek from Jack in the Box Creek.
The 6.4 megalitre sewage spill in Jack in the Box Creek last week was in the final stages of clean-up when the rain came and North East Water operations manager Fiona Smith said the amount of water that might have been flushed into Wodonga Creek was small compared with the high flow of the Murray River.
She said as part of the sewage clean-up a stone bund had been built at the end of Jack in the Box Creek to stop water flowing into Wodonga Creek.
As the water settled, the authority would pump clean water into Wodonga Creek with continued monitoring by North East Water, the Environment Protection Authority and the North East Catchment Management Authority, Ms Smith said.
The flow resulting from the rain had been Jack in the Box Creek’s first flush since the spill, she said.
“The last stage of the clean-up was going to be a flushing of the creek. We’ve had a bit of help with the rain coming a little earlier,” she said.
Ms Smith said North East Water was now containing the stormwater behind the stone bund as a precaution.
“Our crews spent last weekend removing the solids from Jack in the Box Creek and we used a vacuum truck to extract the contaminated water,” she said.
“Thursday’s rain caused stormwater and water we had contained upstream of the spill to flow down the creek and a small amount has possibly entered Wodonga Creek.
“As a precaution we are working to contain that flow with the completion of a bund at the confluence of the creeks, simply because this was the first flush through Jack in the Box Creek since the spill was cleaned up.
“The high flows in Wodonga Creek mean that not only is the dilution factor very high, but also that Wodonga Creek water is actually pushing back up into Jack in the Box Creek, not the other way around,” she said.
Ms Smith said the EPA had been informed but the authority was confident there had been very minimal contamination of Wodonga Creek.
Goulburn-Murray Water’s manager of diversions operations Barry O’Donnell said North East Water’s achievement in minimising contamination of Wodonga Creek and the Murray River was appreciated.
He said it was a reminder that river water should not be consumed unless properly treated.