CHAPEL HILL - UNC officials suspected treated wastewater was leaking at their animal holding facility in Bingham Township nearly two months before installing a sump pump to keep the water from reaching Collins Creek.

State officials served UNC with a violation notice Dec. 18 after observing green-dye tinted wastewater in the creek, which feeds into the Haw River and ultimately Jordan Lake. The state already considered the creek impaired, meaning it had high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus, which can kill fish and other aquatic life.

It was one of three recent wastewater spills at the Ö Bingham Facility, commonly called Ö The Farm because it houses animals used in research on the university’s main campus.

One spill, a 630-gallon leak, did not trigger a notice because the wastewater did not reach the creek. That spill, Nov. 18, came from pipes that separated and was contained to the soil, UNC officials said.

The spill that reached the creek came from a leak in the liner of a lagoon, or storage pond where treated wastewater is stored before being sprayed on the site. In a Dec. 11 letter to the state Division of Water Quality, UNC geophysicist Larry Daw said the university had begun a plan to capture the leaking water and pump it back into the pond.

On Dec. 15, a day after a meeting between UNC officials and Bingham residents at the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center, Daw reported back to the state that the university had turned on a sump pump that morning to begin collecting the leaking treated wastewater. Eventually the pond will be emptied and the water in it hauled to the Orange Water and Sewer Authority’s water treatment plant while the liner is fixed, Mary Beth Koza, director of UNC’s Department of Environment, Health & Safety, said last week.

UNC officials did not tell residents at the Dec. 14 meeting that treated wastewater had reached the creek, even though state officials observed the green-dyed wastewater earlier that day.

In a Nov. 17 letter to UNC, MACTEC Engineering and Consulting Inc. notes that UNC first reported the suspected leak to the company Oct. 19 and that the company had detected foul-smelling water leaving the outall drain at about 1.5 gallons per minute on Nov. 3.

Laura Streitfeld, an organizer with Preserve Rural Oange, a Bingham-based citizens group, criticized the university for not alerting residents sooner. “UNC staff don’t know when the leak began, and neither the university nor local residents know how much wastewater was released into the creek over eight weeks or possibly longer,’ she said.

At a rate of 1.5 gallons per minute, Streitfeld said the discharge could have reached 2,160 gallons per day or 120,960 gallons over the eight weeks between Oct. 19 and Dec. 15, the day UNC turned the sump pump on.

The wastewater had been treated for some pollutants, but Streitfeld said the process does not detect or treat water for all contaminants including pharmaceuticals.

“I’m not confident that what was released is safe and not toxic,” she said Monday afternoon.

A third leak, of “maybe 100 gallons,” occurred two weeks ago when piping in the spray irrigation system did not work properly and treated wastewater seeped leaked into the soil, said Koza.

Efforts to reach Koza and Dwayne Pinkney, associate vice chancellor and point person for UNC communications, late Monday afternoon before the Chapel Hill News deadline were unsuccessful. (Editor's note: In a voice mail message after deadline, Koza said Streitfeld's estimate of the size of the leak was inaccurate.)

In a e-mail to Streitfeld, Pinkney said the pond leak was discovered just days before he called and told her about it Dec. 11, the same day Daw, the geophysicist, reported the leak to the state in a letter.

“While we have not formalized the structures for reporting and communications, we have clearly embraced the concept of openness and are commited to working with you on identifying the most appropriate mechanisms,” Pinkney wrote.

The university has planned plans a $27 million expansion of the Bingham Facility, located off Orange Chapel Clover Garden Road in Bingham Township.

The 57-acre site has about 60 research dogs, UNC-CH officials said in December. A building under construction will add 100 dogs that are currently now housed near Hillsborough. The new building has been designed to add 100 more when funding is secured.

At the same time, the university has applied for federal stimulus money to move dogs and pigs at the Frances Owen Blood Research Laboratory near University Lake in Carrboro to Bingham. If the money comes through, new buildings could house up to 150 additional dogs – for a total of between 400 and 450 – and up to 150 hogs.