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Pipe breaks, spilling sewage into creek
Officials blame landslide near Calabasas
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More from Other NewsA football-field-sized patch of earth slid and broke the sewer line near Las Virgenes and Lost Hills roads, said David Lippman, Las Virgenes Municipal Water District director of facilities and operations.
"It was a sudden failure," Lippman said. "During rainy weather we do surveillance of our lines. We inspected it yesterday, and there was no indication of a problem then."
Part of the sewage that flows into the line was diverted to sewers in the city of Los Angeles, but an unknown amount was still flowing into the creek.
"Fortunately the creek is running pretty heavily, and it gets diluted a lot," said Jeff Reinhardt, the district's public affairs manager.
Efforts to repair the line have been hampered because storms caused so much damage throughout Southern California, said Arlene Post, the water district's director of resource conservation and public outreach.
"There are so many similar issues occurring right now that we are encountering difficulty getting experts and equipment out there," Post said.
Las Virgenes Creek flows toward the ocean and joins up with Malibu Creek, which enters the ocean at Malibu Lagoon State Beach, also known as Surfrider Beach.
The water district notified regulatory agencies and those downstream from the break.
"They told us they were putting up a temporary reroute from above the break to a spot below it," said Suzanne Goode, senior resource ecologist with the California State Parks Department. Surfrider Beach would be closed until the sewage flow and any contamination ended.
"It's always a good time to stay out of the water after a rain anyway," Goode said. "There's a lot of oil, grease, horse manure, septic-system overflow, everything out there."
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