A non-standard valve turned the wrong way caused as much as 106 cubic yards of cement — about 12 cement trucks worth — to be pumped into an Oakland creek Wednesday morning, local and state officials said Thursday.
Glen Echo Creek has been left a gray, sludgy mess along Clarewood Drive to Broadway Terrace. Crews dammed storm drains about a half-mile downstream and redirected the water into a sewer for treatment, but some of the cement got through and did further damage to the creek bed in the nearby Claremont Country Club.
“There’s a half-mile of creek that is virtually dead,” state Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesman Andrew Hughan said.
The mix is not considered toxic to humans, but at least one bird has died and another was sickened by the spill.
