Lift station failure causes 20,000-gallon sewage spill into Lakeland’s Winston Creek

LAKELAND — Approximately 20,000 gallons of raw sewage was pumped into Winston Creek to prevent sewage from backing up into the Meadow Brook Mobile Home Park, 3801 New Tampa Highway, earlier this month.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection received a report about the spill on Tuesday. Mark Mikolon, an environmental specialist with Polk County Department of Natural Resources, reported to the DEP that he learned of the spill on Tuesday and investigated the same day.

Mikolon’s report said the date of the spill was unclear but it had happened days ago when a power outage caused the Meadow Brook Mobile Home Park lift station to overflow.

The report said the lift station was running properly on Tuesday.

However, when Mikolon interviewed the park’s maintenance manager, Tom Letchworth, Letchworth indicated that during the power outage he had pumped raw sewage from the inoperable pump station into the creek to prevent backups into the mobile home community.

Source: The Ledger