HOWARD COUNTY, Md. — If you're planning on fishing or taking a dip in Lake Elkhorn or the stream feeding into it any time soon, you may want to think twice.
A large sewage spill came as a shock to neighbors.
"I had no idea that this was going on in my backyard," Pat Simon said.
Hear residents voice their concerns following a sewage overflow in Howard County
She said when her neighbor told her the stream behind their townhomes on Watchlight Court was overflowing, she thought nothing of it.
Until she saw signs saying raw sewage overflowed in the water.
"I received no notifications from anyone else. If I hadn't physically gone back to the stream and seen the signs, I wouldn't have known that anything was going on."
The Howard County Health Department said over a million gallons of sewage overflowed into the stream.
Pat told WMAR-2 News that it's even more shocking considering the area's water plays a pivotal role for her dogs on walks.
"I'll take them swimming in the stream and playing in the field and then we'll do a bath day after that, which obviously we're not gonna do this weekend now. We definitely utilize the park area. Kids are playing in the stream, my dogs, go in the stream, they drink from the stream."
According to the county health department, the Department of Public Works was first notified of a potential overflow on Wednesday around noon.
And they stopped the overflow the next day.
But neighbor Brandon Bonner says he noticed the sewage a few days earlier when his dog came into contact with it.
"Probably like five days ago, six days ago," Bonner said. "It was just like sandish sludge. And she had to jump over it, fell in it."
He told WMAR-2 News he also didn't receive a notification and didn't know how much water the sewage affected.
"I was actually on my way to go fishing for the first time in I don't know how long."
But the health department advises people to avoid contact with the water from the point of discharge, continuing downstream including Lake Elkhorn.
Signs near where the overflow started say work on the issue could take 90 days.
However, there are no warning signs near the lake.
"Not only that, but we have a lot of wildlife that lives here. And that's one of the things I loved about Columbia was the amount of wildlife. So it's definitely concerning," Pat said.
WMAR-2 News called the health department and the Department of Public Works with some of the concerns neighbors raised but didn't hear back.
