A veritable river of shit in excess of 100,000 gallons continued through November 27 to flow into a South Laredo tributary to the Río Grande. The arroyo/creek site of the spill, which is 230-feet from the Río Grande, was accessed by City utilities crews down San Luis Street.
San Luis Street is roughly 1,000-feet from the rear of the HEB store on US Hwy. 83 South. It is the closest perpendicular (to Hwy. 83) route to the spill site.
The site is also accessible down a sandy, eroded road that begins at the Zacatecas Street dead end and runs parallel to the HEB mall fenceline facing the river, a narrow route to the river that crosses the creek at the site of the spill. According to a City employee, it is a route regularly traversed by USBP SUVs and National Guard vehicles. The raw sewage spill is 2.3 miles from the City’s Masterson Road sewage collection and treatment plant.
A Nov. 26, 2024 City of Laredo press release issued at 5:08 p.m. erroneously reported a Nov. 25 sewage breach at South Zacate Creek, when in fact it was just off the intersection of South Meadow and Hwy. 83 South. A Nov. 27 press release issued at 10:45 a.m. no longer referred to Zacate Creek or any other specific location and reported the spill had been halted with a bypass line and that cleanup efforts included “chemical treatments to safeguard the environment and protect public health.”
The attached video taken at mid-afternoon on Nov. 27, however, shows the two open ends of the broken 54-inch sewage pipe, one continuing to drain the raw sewage that carried the fetid stench of human waste. The flow of 100,000 gallons of raw sewage is memorialized by a dark brown stain at the base of the arroyo that carried the sewage to the river.
A member of the City’s repair crew told a photographer on site on Nov. 27 that they “were waiting for materials to arrive to repair the break.”
