Sanitary sewer serves a good part of Breezy Point. The system includes sewer mains, lift
stations, and force mains. Most sanitary
sewer lines rely on gravity for the movement of flow, water runs downhill. With the topography of the city we have many lift
stations. A lift station is a large
manhole that collects flow from the sanitary sewer and pumps it in a force main
to a manhole at a higher elevation allowing it to again flow downhill. This process is repeated throughout the city
with all flow eventually ending up in the wastewater treatment plant.
The city has a total of nine lift stations in its sewer
system. Some of these handle a good deal
of flow. Lift station #1 is the primary lift
taking all flow to the wastewater plant.
Other lift stations have varied flow, some rather minor amounts with
others somewhere in between. In maintaining a sewer system it is important
to be assured the lift stations are working properly. A malfunctioning lift station would cause
backups into homes so maintaining them is extremely important. Three lift stations have heavier flows and
these have monitoring equipment installed.
This equipment will call out city employees when a problem occurs.
One lift station monitoring device has been giving us some
problems and was proposed to be replaced.
In discussing this issue it was felt the all the lift stations should have
monitoring equipment installed. The cost
for this equipment is $1,500 per lift station so replacing one unit and adding
the others will be an investment of $10,500.
This purchase was approved by the city council. With these additional units we’ll also have
increased costs for cell phone service at each lift station but additional
security will be achieved in monitoring all of them. Lift stations will continue to be checked
manually but if a power outage or other problem occurs we’ll know about it when
it happens. The alarm equipment will
call an employee. The added equipment
provides for more dependable service in maintaining our sewer system. These new monitoring devices will be
installed as soon as possible.
