Home  Sustainable Land Development Today March 2007
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Written by Rob Kundert
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Thursday, 01 March 2007 |
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Stations providing a “lift” to wastewater challenges.
Custom crafted pumping stations are one company’s answer to a reality of modern development — gravity is losing ground as the prime mover of wastewater.
“The easy land has been built on,” a simple truth according to Mark Sheldon, Vice President of Marketing for ROMTEC Utilities, a southern Oregon-based manufacturer of pre-engineered lift stations. “Many, if not most of the residential and industrial developments going on today require some form of pumping to get to a point where gravity can then carry it.”
There are two ways to build a gravity sewer: by using natural downhill terrain to move effluent through pipes; or by digging a descending trench in which to lay sewer pipe. When the site is on the “wrong side of the hill” or when the trench becomes so deep that the cost is prohibitive, a lift station will pump the fluid up to connect to the sewer infrastructure.
Meanwhile, as more of these gravity-boosting solutions are required, communities are becoming more particular about how they are set up. After all, they will be responsible for their operation and maintenance long after the developer puts them into the ground.
“The overall trend is that the public sector—cities and counties—want increasingly sophisticated pumping stations,” Sheldon said. “The developer can’t just build one to his or her liking and have them accept it.”
ROMTEC Utilities offers medium sized lift-stations that would handle inflows from 100 gallons per minute to four or five-thousand gallons per minute. Each unit, designed for the particular locale, is outfitted with equipment from ITT Flygt, the world’s leading manufacturer of pumps and monitoring systems.
“Our niche in the market is to provide complete systems to developers, to their contractors, to their civil engineers for the ultimate approval by the public authority who will, in most cases, own them,” Sheldon said.
Wastewater Substation
Modern substations consist of four basic components: a well structure, submersible pumps, a system of one-way valves and a control panel.
Inflow enters the well, where redundant pumps push it out through a force main to a discharge point where gravity can once again take over or to another lift station or treatment plant. “It has an electrical control panel which powers the station and also sends information back to a central treatment plant or public works department,” Sheldon said, which allows for remote monitoring and control.
“We are a combination of engineering capabilities: civil, mechanical, electrical and telemetry-software communication,” Sheldon said. “Every one of these projects involves each one of those disciplines. Our calling card is that we can figure it all out and supply it all.”
Most residential developers, for instance, have a site civil engineer who designs the site plan including roads, sewer and water infrastructure layouts. When they get to a low point and need a pumping station, his company can step in to custom fit a lift station or stations to fit the local conditions. “We don’t charge for our engineering services. Our goal is to sell the pump station as a complete system to them.”
The company adds a dose of pre-emptive medicine by opening up communication channels with local officials.
“Probably one of the greatest services that we provide is to get online with, say the city of Bakersfield, California, and talk to their public works people and their city engineer to understand very quickly what they are going to approve,” Sheldon said.
Avoiding regulatory problems later also addresses one of the great challenges facing developers today—the ever increasing need for speed. “They are dealing with a marketplace, interest rates and timelines that are critical,” he said. “Getting this infrastructure designed, approved and in the ground quickly allows them to sell lots.”
Local Variables
A fast growing trend in the market is the awareness by local authorities of the long-term implications of lift stations. “Nobody wanted one to begin with, so if they are going to get one, they have learned from accepting inferior things in the past, that they are going to have really good ones,” Sheldon said. “Every city has its own idea of the perfect pump station.”
Remote monitoring has become a big issue. As systems require more such pumping stations, maintenance trips can be a problem. Through sophisticated telemetry, public works or other central locations, they can keep tabs on each site to address aspects of the station operation. “It saves them money. They want to minimize trips they make,” Sheldon said. “They want quality that is going to last, they want reliability and they want a sophisticated communication system so they can see that this thing is working.”
Some relatively flat areas of the country got the message 10 to 15 years ago of the need for consistency in such infrastructure. “Very flat, very urban areas run out of gravity relatively quickly,” he said. “I believe Miami has 1,200 pump stations in its sewer district. With so many, they realized the need for consistency. Other parts of the country are catching up. “They can’t have eight or nine different pump-station set-ups. They want each one to look exactly the same way, operate the same way and be maintained the same way.”
A case in point was the city of Camas (WA), which saw its population more than double to 15,000 since 1990, primarily due to retiring Baby Boomers. Realizing their existing waste water system couldn’t handle the rapid residential development, city officials upgraded their existing lift stations and installed a series of new ones. Developers are required to install similar units, with the ROMTEC pre-engineered lift station packages as the preferred choice.
“That trend has been taking place, generally over the last 20 years but on an accelerated basis over the last 10,” Sheldon said. “A driving force in public waste water/storm water collection is to standardize within each district on designs, configurations and methodology.”
Stormwater
The Clean Water Act is growing the market for lift stations. Environmental concerns over surface run off and the pollutants it carries to rivers, lakes and oceans is burgeoning the demand. Water passes over pavement, for instance, and picks up petroleum and chemical residues as well as litter. Untreated, it makes its way to open waterways.
“It’s explosive,” Sheldon said. “We are currently seeing stormwater looked at in the same way that wastewater has always been looked at. Los Angeles County has an initiative to treat it all, not only the wastewater but also the surface water.”
The company was brought in on a project in Santa Barbara (CA) which created a controlled connection between the community’s storm and wastewater systems. During the drier summer months, surface run off primarily from residential use, which flowed into the stormwater system, was pumped into a wastewater main to be treated. Later, during the winter months which produced higher volumes of rain fall, the stormwater was allowed to run its normal course.
The company was brought in by officials in Union City (CA) to install a lift station that would work with a 20-million-gallon detention pond. It was created to draw off high volumes of water from its drainage canal during storm events. When the situation stabilized, the pump kicks into gear, pumping the water from the basin into the canal.
Sheldon predicts the trend will continue. “Look where the smart, long-term money is going on the stock market,” he said of all the applications dedicated to water. “This industry is growing fast because of the demands to treat it all.” LDT |
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