Wastewater Spill Into Lookout Creek Draws Concern, City Says Discharge Was Partially Treated

A wastewater overflow from the City of Trenton’s treatment plant on April 10 is drawing concern after a local kayaker reported foul-smelling discharge and dead fish in Lookout Creek, though city officials say the release was limited, partially treated and contained quickly.

Mayor Alex Case said the material released was not raw sewage, but a semi-treated byproduct from the clarification process.

“It wasn’t raw sewage that was flowing out of that,” Case said. “It was the solids and material from the treatment process, what they call floc. It’s part of the semi-treated stage.”

According to the city, the incident began around 2 p.m. when a clarifier system, which removes solids from wastewater, became clogged. The blockage caused sludge to build up, and crews began working to clear it.

As part of that process, the affected clarifier had to be drained back into the plant’s intake system. That temporarily overloaded the system and led to an overflow from a secondary clarifier, resulting in a discharge into the freshwater outflow that feeds Lookout Creek.

Case said crews were already actively working the issue when the overflow occurred and moved quickly to shut the system down once it was identified.

“From the time they saw it, they shut it down immediately,” he said, adding that the overflow lasted roughly 15 to 30 minutes.

Case also pushed back on claims circulating on social media that the discharge stopped because someone was filming.

“Social media is saying that they saw someone taking pictures and we shut it down because of that,” Case said. “That’s not the case. It just happened to be at the same time. Our guys were already in the process of shutting things down because of what they were seeing.”

The city reported the incident to the Georgia Environmental Protection Division’s 24-hour spill line shortly after stabilizing the system, as required. Case said state officials are treating the incident as a relatively small spill and are working with the city on next steps.

Because this type of overflow has not occurred before at the facility, the city is following guidance from state and federal regulators, including ongoing monitoring of the creek.

“This is a first for us,” Case said. “We’re going to be testing upstream and downstream for the next week or more, just to make sure everything is where it needs to be.”

The monitoring will include water quality checks such as dissolved oxygen, temperature and pH levels.

Officials said there is no threat to the public drinking water supply.

A Trenton resident who was on the creek that afternoon described what he said appeared to be a more serious situation.

Caden Tripp recounted on Facebook that he was kayaking on Lookout Creek when he noticed “dirty water with an absolutely horrible smell being dumped from the hillside” near the treatment facility.

“It was thick, foul-smelling, and did not have the consistency of properly treated water,” Tripp said.

Tripp said that after pulling out his phone to record, he saw someone near a control panel and said the flow stopped shortly afterward.

After continuing downstream, Tripp said he observed fewer signs of wildlife and what he described as a “concerning number of dead fish.”

Case said the city has not independently confirmed reports of dead fish or any ecological impact and noted that staff observed fish in the area later that day.

“We went back down there and looked, and fish were still in the water,” he said.

The city said it will continue monitoring the situation in coordination with state agencies and will provide updates as more information becomes available.