Clearlake Covered in Crap

Clearlake experienced a 2.9 million gallon sewer spill starting January 11, 2026

On January 11, a sewage pipe broke near Robin Lane in Clearlake California, spilling nearly three million gallons of sewage onto the streets. Six weeks later and the Clearlake city council is still waiting to resolve matters with the hundreds of residents affected.

The sewer and water utilities are not owned or operated by the City of Clearlake, but by the Lake County Special Districts. The agency manages infrastructure that serves more than 40,000 residents across the county, including pipelines and water systems that in some cases have not been significantly upgraded in more than 30 years.

During a recent February 19, 2026 city council meeting, two members of the American Communist Party (ACP) California Chapter attended to deliver public comments and questions, yet received dismissive and deflecting answers from the city council. Adam from the ACP asked why the initial report of 2,000 gallons over two hours was only revised to 2.9 million gallons over 40 hours after a reporter inquired. City Manager Alan Flora responded that the incident management team had concerns and “it wasn’t something that we really wanted to reflect in our messaging.” He stated that the Special Districts were responsible for reporting to Cal OES and he thought “there deserves to be scrutiny of the numbers that were reported.”

Josh from the ACP made a public comment requesting “how are you going to ensure the people are taken care of and how are you going to ensure this doesn’t happen again?” Mayor Dirk Slooten provided an answer shifting responsibility to the Special Districts and stated that “the only reason the city got involved is because we felt we could do a better job organizing the testing.”

As of this last city council meeting, the city had ordered 100 filtration/sanitation systems to be installed at affected properties. They were aware of 164 affected properties and required residents to apply to receive these systems, of which they had received 79 applications, up from 26 in the previous city council meeting. Adam noted when leaving the city council meeting that the smell of sewage was still in the air six weeks after the initial spill.

ACP California will continue to monitor the situation and report on the conditions.