Sunbury Mills residents still clogging pump

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Dur­ing last Wednesday’s Sun­bury Ser­vices Com­mit­tee meet­ing, waste­water treat­ment plant super­vi­sor Rich Fel­ton said res­i­dents are still flush­ing dis­pos­able wipes into the san­i­tary sewer sys­tem and clog­ging the pump at the Sun­bury Mills lift station.

At the July Ser­vices Com­mit­tee meet­ing Fel­ton said the one-phase elec­tric pumps in the sta­tion can not han­dle the non-tear, non-biodegradable wipes, even though they are adver­tised as disposable.

In June and July alone, Fel­ton said, the vil­lage paid over $2,000 in over­time call­ing in employ­ees on week­ends to unclog the Sun­bury Mills pump.

“The Sun­bury Mills pump sta­tion requires daily atten­tion with pulling of pumps to remove debris, result­ing in many over­time hours and risk­ing back­ups due to pump clog­ging,” Fel­ton said. ”The prob­lem at the Sun­bury Mills pump sta­tion has become the top pri­or­ity to be resolved, and has impacted the amount of time the crew has to work pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance on the rest of the vil­lage san­i­tary sewer col­lec­tion system.”

One costly solu­tion, Fel­ton said, would be to run a three-phase elec­tric line to the lift sta­tion and pur­chase and install a three-phase pump, but that solu­tion would be cost-prohibitive.

An alter­na­tive solu­tion that Fel­ton came up with would be to install a Flygt vari­able phase drive pump that con­verts single-phase elec­tric to three-phase.

“To install the Flygt vari­able phase pump and redo the con­trol panel would cost about $15,000,” Fel­ton said. “Flygt has a clog free oper­a­tions guar­an­tee, Flygt will reim­burse us if we have to unclog that pump, plus we would save 25 per­cent on energy use.”

Later in the evening dur­ing the reg­u­lar vil­lage coun­cil meet­ing, coun­cil mem­bers directed vil­lage fis­cal offi­cer Cathy Belcher to appro­pri­ate funds for the pur­chase of the Flygt pump.

Coun­cil mem­bers also approved a motion to spend $3,189 for Duke Root Con­trol to treat 1,222 feet of san­i­tary sewer ser­vice line with root dis­solv­ing foam.

Duke Root Con­trol will treat 407 feet of san­i­tary sewer on Arbor Drive, 392 feet on Arbor Drive West, 420 feet on Mid­dle­view Drive and 784 feet on Chipmunk.

Posted by Gary Henery on Aug 8 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.