Two spills, totaling in about 11,600 gallons of discharge, occurred at the King Arthur Lift Station Tuesday. 

According to a City of LaGrange spill report, the first spill occurred at 8:30 a.m. after a piping failure caused pump wastewater to fall back into the well, causing backing up in the wet well. Jim Russell, City of LaGrange water quality programs manager, said the second spill occurred around 12:30 p.m., but the cause is unclear as of Tuesday afternoon. 

The first spill was stopped around 8:40 a.m., and crews were working on repairs. 

Russell said when they were working on the pump, the second pump became clogged. Russell said the second spillage stopped around 1:08 p.m. 

“It was just an unfortunate disaster, but they did get it pumped back down, and they’re going to be repairing the problems,” Russell said. “I’ll find out tomorrow morning exactly what did happen.”

Pepperell Creek was the only receiving waterway listed in the spill report. Russell said they have put signs around the creek warning residents of raw sewage.

“We put warning signs up to let people know that the creek has some raw sewage emptied into it,” Russell said.

Russell said residents should be unaffected otherwise from the spills.

He also said having the same station cause two spills in one day is unusual. 

“It’s rare because most of the time when we find a problem like that, it gets fixed and there’s no more problems with it,” Russell said. 

“This was an unusual situation. It could happen because of a pipe failure like this situation. … There’s a lot of things that can cause it, but usually when the problem is found and it gets fixed, it’s just a one-time thing.”