Massive flooding this past week claimed lives and destroyed millions of dollars in property across the state, and local officials say the ecological implications have yet to fully be realized, though the impact to the environment could have been much worse.

Officials say that despite the Carrollton Waste Water Treatment Plant and the Carroll County Water Authority Treatment Plant overflowing as the flood waters raged early Monday morning, the actual impact of the sewage spill on the water system was effectively nominal. While any amount of untreated or partially treated sewage entering into the area ecosystem poses a threat to the sanctity of the drinking water down stream, the sheer amount of water rushing through the plants on Monday and into Tuesday diluted the untreated portion to relatively unharmful levels, said Carrollton Assistant City Manger Tim Grizzard.

“Although the plant didn’t function due to the inflow of water, there was really no harm to the water from the waste water plant,” Grizzard said. “It’s something we prefer not to happen. We wish the plant could still operate, but the waters exceeded the design criteria, and there wasn’t anything we could do.”

City officials made the decision several days ago to turn off the system that powers the plant for fear of the flood waters entering into the electrical system and causing an explosion. While it’s hard to say exactly how much water passed through the plant in the 24 hours between early morning Monday and Tuesday, the valve monitoring water intake shut down with a final reading of 4,500 million gallons of water a day. The plant normally operates at an intake rate of 3 million gallons of water a day, and the flow of the river that feeds into it, on typical day, would register at only 26 million gallons a day.

Because of the unprecedented intake of water, Grizzard said, the actual amount of sewage spilled only represents a small fraction of the total water passing through the plant and moving downstream, minimalizing the actual ecological impact of the spill. The plant went back online late later in the week and is functioning normally.

Similarly, the Carroll County Water Authority’s Waste Water Plant near Fairfield Plantation is back online after being flooded on Monday. Despite the sewage spill that came as a result of the flooding, the dilution of the water as a whole limited the impact of the untreated waste water on the water system.

“It’s either partially treated at the start or heavily diluted when you’ve got a storm like that,” Windom said. “I don’t think there’s much if any real impact because of [the spill] just because of the sheer quantity of water that was moving through the plant at that time.”

The Water Authority on Friday lifted a boil-water advisory it had issued to customers in some areas.

Carrollton residents were saved from being under a boil alert during the flooding because of the effectiveness of the new multi-million-dollar water membrane filtration system at its plant.

Other county residents have not been so lucky. Gene Ellis, director of environmental health with the Carroll County Health Department, said those who rely on wells for their drinking water should be especially wary of consuming any of the water if their respective wells saw flooding earlier this week. Concerned residents should contact a Health Department inspector for appropriate testing, or they can bring a sample of their well water to the department office at the David Perry Administration Building in Carrollton.

Another environmental problem that will inevitably crop up in the days to come, Ellis said, is an influx of mosquitoes to the area, a nuisance that can bring with it the potential for the spread of disease. Carroll County has yet to see any mosquito infestation as a result of the floods because the waters have only recently slowed, and mosquitoes lay their eggs exclusively in standing water. Ellis did advise homeowners to ensure that any sitting water around their homes has been cleared or treated with a mosquito repellent.

Runoff along bodies of water in the county will inevitably provide for nesting ground for mosquitoes, but the runoff and erosion itself can cause large-scale soil degradation and jeopardize the structural integrity of roads and bridges as well.

A total of 56 roads were initially made impassable by the flooding and the resulting erosion. A number of bridges, including those on Cross Plains-Hulett and Horsley Mill roads, will require millions of dollars in repairs after the soil around their banks eroded into the waters, ripping large holes in the structures and making others simply impassable.