Sailors have unintentionally flushed millions of gallons of raw sewage into the San Diego bay over the last two years, according to a press release issued by the Navy today.
The spill stemmed from a sewage pipe leading from Palmer Hall, a 1,032-bed, 12-story barracks at Naval Base San Diego, which was mistakenly connected to a storm drain when the building was constructed in 2004, according to the press release.
Roughly 10.25 million gallons of sewage have since been dumped in the bay, according to the Navy’s initial approximations.
Do the stinky math and it pencils out to roughly 14,000 gallons per day. That’s a lot of yuck. It’s enough to fill up about one and a half tanker trucks or the hippo pond at the San Diego zoo.
The sewage flow was diverted to a holding tank after the pipe was discovered during an unrelated construction project. The Navy is investigating.