Humpy Wheeler and his wife didn’t find out about the 2.5 million gallon raw sewage spill that passed by their front yard last Saturday until they read about it in the paper. The Lowe’s Motor Speedway president and his family live on a 37-acre property that fronts on the mouth of Mountain Island Lake cove.”He said, “I can’t even talk about this, I am so disturbed by it,'” said his wife, Pat Wheeler. “We just couldn’t believe it.”
Last year, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities (CMU) started a door hanger program to inform people who live in the path of raw sewage spills about what may be floating by their yard in the wake of a spill.
The Wheelers were among the dozens of homeowners who live on the shore of Drake Cove who were not notified about the sewage spill into McDowell Creek, which is directly upstream. Since then, Wheeler, a Catawba River Foundation advisory board member, has been looking for answers. So has Kathy Jaeck, the covekeeper for that stretch of Mountain Island Lake. Like the other residents of the area’s shoreline, Jaeck now wonders if Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities will notify them of sewage spills in the future.
“Had this happened in the summer, a lot of people would have been out on the water,” she said. “My dog was out swimming this weekend.”
Right after the spill, CMU sent out a press release that claimed that roughly a dozen Neck Road residents on McDowell Creek Cove, which has very little waterfront property, were notified. Drake Cove and Arthur Auten roads have over 30 properties with lake frontage, but Creative Loafing could find no one along these roads who was notified by door hanger. McDowell Creek Cove empties directly into Drake Creek Cove.
“It’s irritating,” said Arthur Auten Road lakefront homeowner Charlie Witherspoon, who says he found out about the spill last Sunday from television reporters who showed up at his home.
CMU Spokesperson Vic Simpson said the utility wasn’t deliberately trying to keep anyone in the dark.
“This door hanger process, it’s new,” Simpson said. “Looking back, we could have done door hangers for them as well. It wouldn’t have been that hard. We did more than we were required to do, but not as much as we could have conceivably done. I think we’ll learn from this.”
CMU spokespeople said the spill from the McDowell Creek wastewater treatment plant was caused by a repair worker’s error.
Even though it was an accident, Humpy Wheeler said, it still creates a significant problem.
“It was played down as far as its impact on the lake,” Wheeler said. “It’s another example of the totally strained infrastructure we have throughout the whole county. People move to Charlotte or live in Charlotte for the quality of life, and certainly part of that is clean water.”
This article appears in Jan 29 – Feb 4, 2003.
