New Pump Station Strengthens Township Wastewater System
Bridgeport Township replaces aged infrastructure
New wet well base construction.
The wastewater collection system in Bridgeport Charter Township consists of six pump stations, nearly 50 linear miles of gravity sewer, and a wastewater treatment plant that has an 11-million-gallon maximum per day capacity.
This past year, the Township completed an improvement project that not only replaced a decades-old confined-space-entry pump station that was located at the northwest corner of Linger Lane and Larry Tim Drive called Southfield Pump Station, but also moved the entire station nearly 600 feet from its original location.
“We’ve been working to improve the system since I took over in 2010,” Dan Billingsley, the Wastewater Treatment Plant Superintendent for Bridgeport Township said. “We have renovated the pump stations at Airport Road, Williamson Road, and King Road. This station was next on the list.”
The Southfield Pump Station was originally constructed in 1961. It had an eight-foot diameter underground metal drywell pump station that was equipped with duplex two-speed pumps, a six-foot diameter concrete wet well, and an adjacent valve vault. The station also had dual force mains, which were manually selected for use when the pumps were turned from low speed to high speed and back again.
Billingsley said to keep up with the different wet weather flow scenarios, his staff would have to manually change the pump speed at the station and insert a relay to shift pump speeds automatically from high to low to keep customers from flooding. The process was inefficient and not ideal.
The underground metal drywell required potentially hazardous confined-space-entry, and the wet well was undersized for the flow the pump station received. In addition, the pump station’s pumps, valves, and controls were nearing the end of their useful life and needed replacement. New controls that would bring the station in conformance with today’s standards would not fit in the existing drywell.
“The station was located at an intersection right behind the curb, which is a very tight area for access and maintenance,” Jennifer Garza, P.E., the Project Manager for Spicer Group, said. “The drywell entrance tube used to climb down was in the grass between the curb and the sidewalk, and the wet well lid was located in the roadway. To install new controls, the panel would have to be installed outside of the station, but we couldn’t do that in this location without protecting it from traffic, and the road commission does not allow bollards in the road right-of-way.”
Placement of gasket fitting on wet well section.
“So, you’re in a difficult situation,” Garza said. “All around, for many reasons, it needed to be totally relocated.”
Spicer Group has been working with Bridgeport Charter Township consistently throughout the years to improve their wastewater treatment system. The Southfield Pump Station was the most recent improvement project Spicer Group has helped the Township complete.
To conform with all the regulatory agencies’ standards and provide a safer, more reliable, and more efficient pump station for the Township, Garza said the solution was to build a brand new station less than two blocks away from the original station on a Township-owned parcel of land used for stormwater retention.
Spicer Group’s team designed a new submersible pump station for the Township that includes two new Flygt integral VFD “smart” pumps that have the ability to vary their speed automatically based on a level sensor, a 10-foot diameter wet well, a valve vault with a bypass connection, pressure transmitter, and flow meter, a new stainless steel control cabinet, and a new dedicated HDPE force main. The station is also equipped with an on-site natural gas emergency generator, so Township staff no longer have to bring in a portable generator during power outages.
“Everything at this station is new, beautiful, more efficient, and more reliable for the Township,” Garza said.
The project also included extending the gravity sewer lines down Larry Tim Drive to bring the gravity flow to the new pump station.
The general contractor on the project was Rohde Brothers Excavating, a construction company based in Saginaw. To install the gravity sewer to the pump station and the wastewater system, “they basically had to thread a needle through a complicated area between the back of curb and right-of-way line with existing utilities located in the front of residents’ properties,” Garza said.
“Any one severe rain event could have really messed us up – but mother nature was kind to us,” Billingsley said. “This project is really going to benefit the residents that are on that portion of the system and prevent any potential backups. As tough of a job as this was it came together pretty damn good.”
