How sewage from a broken pipe at RDU ended up in a creek several miles away
A broken pipe caused a big sewage spill at Raleigh-Durham International Airport on Tuesday, and because of human error, some of it ended up in a creek several miles away.
The city of Raleigh estimates that about 1.1 million gallons of sewage was released near where contractors are building a new runway on the west side of RDU. Contractors had built a temporary bypass system for a city sewer line that runs near the runway site, and at about 8:20 a.m. Tuesday they noticed that a pipe joint had broken.
It appears that the sewage was contained in a basin near Little Brier Creek, said city spokeswoman Kimberly Holmes-Iverson, and a septic hauling company was brought in to begin removing it.
The hauler was instructed to truck the waste to a manhole along Glenwood Avenue, near Lynn Road, where it could be discharged back into the city’s sewer system, Holmes-Iverson said.
But the hauler mistakenly emptied the waste into a storm drain that led to Turkey Creek, a tributary of Crabtree Creek, Holmes-Iverson said. It’s not clear how many truckloads of sewage were dumped into the creek.
“Raleigh water crews are on site now to figure out the extent of this situation and actively repairing it,” she said about 2:30 p.m. Wednesday.
The broken pipe joint was repaired by 10 p.m. Tuesday. The incident happened on the far west side of the airfield and did not affect airport operations, according to an RDU spokeswoman.
This story was originally published May 13, 2026 at 4:26 PM.
