OCEAN CITY – Agencies are monitoring higher bacteria levels in a tributary of Crook Horn Creek that is south of the 34th Street bridge.
According to Mayor Jay Gillian at the Aug. 20 City Council meeting, the county Municipal Utilities Authority and the state Department of Environmental Protection have been checking the levels.
He said the DEP approved a plan in April for the city’s waste treatment facility to discharge fully treated effluent into a waterway that feeds Crook Horn Creek while it repaired its normal outflow pipeline to the ocean.
The pipe, which extends about 3,000 feet into the ocean, experienced a major break in the spring. While the repair work was being done, the levels got higher.
The county Health Department put up signs last Thursday that alarmed some people who saw them, the mayor said, but those signs “didn’t really tell the story.” The DEP was putting up new signs.
City Business Administrator George Savastano explained the advisory was not to fish or wade in a small section of Crook Horn Creek and a small section of the tributaries adjacent to that.
“That was bad working to the sign that put everybody into a little bit of a panic,” Gillian said.
He added the pipe will be fixed in early September.
– By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff