UPDATE: Monterey Water District Baffled Over Mysterious Spill

A mysterious spill in the Carmel River is baffling both the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District and the Carmel River Steelhead Association.

On Friday, a water district engineer told Central Coast News the following:

The spill contained no volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which essentially are petroleum distillates. This also indicates that the spill was likely not white paint.

However, engineers still don’t know what was in the spill.

Their next is to text the water next week for common Monterey County synthetic organic compounds (SOCs), essentially the common pesticides regulated in Monterey County.

These various tests cost the district over $700.

There have been no reports of a fish kill or other damage to aquatic life at the lagoon.

March 2, 2014:

The milky liquid was seen flowing into the Carmel river from a storm drainage system off Highway One Friday afternoon. One fish was struggling to swim through it, but was eventually saved.

Larry Hampson from the water district says he has never seen anything like it.

”I’m sure there have been small spills of various substances, but nothing on the kind of scale that I’ve seen, ” Hampson told Central Coast News.

Now the state is even getting involved with the investigation. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife is also starting an investigation into what the spill was.

In the meantime, the district took samples of the spill on Friday, but it won’t hear back until the middle of this week.