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THOMASVILLE — State officials hit the town with a $35,116 fine Monday for this summer’s large-scale sewage spill, but town leaders are uncertain whether they’ll pay up or challenge the finding.

City Manager Kelly Craver said his staff is continuing to research how and when the spill of up to 15.9 million gallons happened. They might seek help from outside consultants to determine whether the spill, from an isolated sewer line to Hamby Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, really was that big, Craver said.

If it was that big, it would be the “largest on record” with the state Division of Water Quality, state regulators said in issuing the penalty.

“We have 30 days to respond,” Craver said. “Our other options would be either to ask for a review or ask for an administrative hearing.”

The city’s public service staff initially reported the spill as starting Aug. 3, ending the next evening and dumping roughly 385,805 gallons in North Hamby Creek on the city’s outskirts.

On Sept. 10, they changed the report to show a spill starting July 13, lasting 22 days and dumping 15.9 million gallons into the small creek that ultimately flows into High Rock Lake.

Now, after reviewing plant records and interviewing employees, officials think the truth might be closer to their original analysis.

They reported the larger amount after an operator at the Hamby plant told Yadkin River Keeper Dean Naujoks that the spill had been underreported, lasted several weeks and continued despite employee efforts to alert superiors.

Naujoks told the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which launched a continuing investigation into whether any criminal laws were broken in the spill and its aftermath. High Rock is part of the Yadkin system that Naujoks oversees.

The state’s civil, fine-levying process is separate from the EPA  inquiry.

The $35,116 penalty is “adequate” as civil punishment only if it inspires Thomasville officials to spend millions of dollars fixing the spill’s cause: leak-prone sewer lines, Naujoks said.

He noted that several years ago, the city of Raleigh was fined $74,000 for a spill and that Thomasville could have faced a $650,000 fine for a three-week spill of such massive size.

“This is not even remotely close to being a large penalty for the largest municipal sewage spill in state history,” Naujoks said.

Naujoks has no trouble believing that the city’s second report was accurate and that the spill harmed the stream system feeding High Rock, a popular spot for boating and fishing said.

But city officials do doubt its size now, saying they estimated 15.9 million gallons at the behest of an EPA investigator before starting their own inquiry.

That inquiry raised questions about whether a much smaller leak occurred closer to the city’s original estimate, which would explain the lack of fish kills and other outward signs of such a historically large spill, they say.

The city wants to fix its sewage system and is working to find the money, Craver said. The only thing the fine will do is make the repairs harder to finance, he said.

Naujoks said he is sympathetic to that, but Thomasville has been warned many times in recent years to get its sewage system in proper order.

He worked with at least one other town that went back on its word to improve an aging, subpar sewer system after he helped it avoid a similar fine, Naujoks said.

“As a result, there was no significant impact in fixing the problem there,” he said.

History shouldn’t be allowed to repeat itself in Thomasville, Naujoks said.

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or taft.wireback@news-record.com