PINEY COMMUNITY — A state Health Department official said a documented case of raw sewage on the ground near the Alabama Belle resort last week was an isolated incident that has been corrected.

“That area had been checked the previous Friday and it was clear,” Area Environmental Director Jim Hollins told The Post Thursday morning. “However, on [June 28] I had the environmentalists to go to the site in which they confirmed there was a problem.” 

On June 29, local radio station WEIS-AM ran pictures on its website taken several days apart earlier this month at the site of a decentralized sewage system on County Road 462. 

One photo, taken June 19, showed a cloudy liquid with a “sewage odor” standing in a low-lying area. Another photo, dated June 27, showed what appeared to be raw sewage seeping from a nearby manhole cover at the site. 

Hollins said when he found out about the latest incident, he immediately called the system's owner-operators and presented them with a “laundry list” of solutions. 

“Those included having a pumper there to get all the sewage from the ditch, and spreading lime,” Hollins said. 

Roger Rader, co-owner of Canaan Systems, Inc. of Birmingham, which owns and operates the site, said maintenance crews suspect a lightning strike over the weekend of June 26-27 caused the malfunction. 

“This is not all that unusual, with a system like this,” Rader told The Post Thursday. “We think about 50 gallons spilled before we were able to get the pump repaired.” 

The same decentralized system was the subject of an exclusive story in The Post earlier this year that exposed ongoing problems at the facility. In the article, resident Tom DiFiore detailed his two-year struggle to get someone to fix periodic leaks, which he said flooded the area around his home with untreated sewage.

“I called the Health Department, I don't know how many times,” DiFiore told The Post in March. “The last time I called, they told me to call Canaan Systems. When I did that, they told me to call the Health Department.” 

Public documents indicate that on Oct. 23, 2009, the state Health Department ordered Canaan Systems to submit a plan within 30 days for making repairs to the system. 

According to the same April 15, 2010 document, “As of this date they have not submitted any such plan.”

The order from the state Health Department also instructed Rader and co-owner Bob Guthrie to pay a $1,000 fine for a series of violations at the Alabama Belle site, and to install and maintain a system for measuring flow rates into and out of the system.

The order criticized Canaan Systems because “on two occasions they have shown disregard for public health in that they have allowed systems to operate for extended periods of time with raw sewage on the surface of the ground while making no effort to mitigate the situation.” 

Rader said the Alabama Belle site has given Canaan more than its share of problems. He said the site, which was inherited from a previous owner, is older than others operated by the company. He also said the area has been vandalized on at least one occasion in the past year. 

“Someone drove across the drip field while it was wet and we had to wait for the field to dry out before we could get out there and check for damage,” Rader said. “The Health Department was right to shut down the system until we could get it fixed.” 

But in its order dated April 15, the Health Department also criticized Canaan for operating the Alabama Belle site in violation of a modified permit dated Jan. 12, 2010 which called for use of the system to be suspended. Instead, holding tanks were to be pumped and the sewage hauled to another location for treatment. 

Canaan, the document alleged, “has started discharging to the field in non-compliance with that permit.” 

Rader said the long-term plan for the Alabama Belle system is to shutter it permanently. On June 28, a Canaan Systems representative presented the Cherokee County Commission with plans to build a new decentralized system just down the road. 

“We hope the Spring Creek project will be able to replace this site in 12-18 months,” Rader said. “Then we can abandon this system and pump everything to the new location. We are applying for the permits now.” 

In the article that appeared in The Post on March 1, Hollins admitted that the local Health Department had been slow to act on years of reported problems at the Alabama Belle site. But last week, he said any inference that his office still is not keeping a close eye the situation is incorrect. 

“The local health department is there, and I am there,” Hollins said. “Believe me, we are not letting any malfunction go without taking action.”