Wastewater leaks onto Hallandale Beach streets | Video

Wastewater sewage was seen leaking onto the streets of Hallandale Beach on Saturday afternoon after a contractor’s work equipment failed, city officials told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

The sewage leak happened Saturday morning on the 500 Block of Layne Boulevard, near the entrance to the Golden Isles gated community east of Gulfstream Park.

In one video captured at noon by Keith London, a Golden Isles resident, wastewater flooded a center median several yards from the Golden Isles guard gate and then pooled onto the street, which is near stormwater drains that feed into the Intracoastal Waterway.

“It smells like a sewage plant exploded,” London, a former Hallandale Beach commissioner and mayor, told the Sun Sentinel on Saturday afternoon.

London said a dozen manhole covers nearby were also “gushing raw sewage onto the street.”

Hallandale Beach spokesperson Rachel Richardson said the sewage leak is related to a contractor’s work on a nearby lift station where their generator failed, causing sewage to back up and spill out of sewer drains.

Richardson said city public works crews were dispatched to the lift station on Egret Drive around 1 p.m. Saturday to fix the issue by using city-owned generators to keep wastewater pumping.

Above is the video London shot.

“We deployed our own generators because this is a super-serious situation,” Richardson said. “Our crews are getting control of the situation and have been there since early this afternoon.”

She said the contractor the city hired to repair the lift station “is the responsible party in this situation, not the city.”

Meanwhile, the city is also collecting spilled wastewater on the street using vacuums, she added.

She didn’t provide a timeframe for finishing the work but said the spill was reported to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

According to city documents, work on the wastewater lift station on Egret Drive began Jan. 12 and is expected to be completed Jan. 5, 2027. The work includes “replacing and upgrading mechanical and electrical equipment as well as replacing the existing emergency generator to improve system performance, increase system efficiency and reduce system maintenance.”

Sun Sentinel senior writer Phillip Valys can be reached at pvalys@sunsentinel.com or Twitter/X @philvalys.

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