Lift station blowup sends Paradise back to Plan B
By Mark Squibb
Last month, Paradise council approved a motion to rent a replacement pump for Lift Station No. 10 at a cost of almost $12,000 a month for five months, as the lift station had malfunctioned earlier in the month, leaving the facility operating with just one pump.
Councillor Glen Carew at the time warned that should that one pump malfunction too, and the Town had no back up pump, vacuum trucks would have to be called in to move sewage around the clock as was done in 2019 after pumps in the old lift station ruptured spewing sewage into the air and over a neighbouring home.
That is now the exact situation that the Town has found itself in, despite taking the precaution of ordering the replacement pump, as not only did the lift station pump fail, but so too did the rental pump.
“We had two failures, one on the existing pump, and one on the rental pump,” said Mayor Dan Bobbett. “So, it was similar to what happened in 2019… Both pumps are down and we’re in the same situation as we were in 2019.”
Council ’s hope was that the rental pump would serve as a replacement pump, if necessary, until the new lift station is commissioned in February.
News that the replacement pump had also failed was a shock.
“My first reaction was, ‘Are you kidding me?’” said Mayor Bobbett. “My next reaction was, ‘What can we do?’ Staff were amazing and came up with a plan. We’ve been here before. But the other thing is, we’re only months away from commissioning a brand-new facility… For this to happen now is very disheartening.”
During a regular inspection on November 1, staff realized the pumps were not operating correctly, and the level of sewage within the lift station was rising.
Pumper trucks were called in to suck sewage from the lift station while staff worked to try and identify a solution.
“On November 4 it became apparent that we needed further external resources to pump the sewage out in the trucks and transport it to our sewage treatment plant, or back into manholes where gravity could take it to the sewage treatment plant,” said Bobbett. “We needed extra resources, and in order to avail of those extra resources, we declared a state of emergency for a portion of the town that was affected, in order to avail of more pumper trucks and keep essential services running.”
As of deadline, the exact cause of the malfunction had not yet been determined.
Bobbett said the new lift station will have extra chambers — vats that hold the sewage — and other redundancies built in to avoid complications.
At this past Tuesday’s public council meeting, councillors applauded the work of staff as they tried to address the problem, and issued their apologies to residents in the area having to deal with the constant noise and traffic congestion as the pumper trucks do their work.
As of Wednesday’s deadline, the problem had not yet been resolved although Bobbett hoped it would be resolved within the week.
Construction on the replacement lift station began in January 2023.
The original pre-tender construction estimates came in at $12.6 million and a secondary estimate accounting for inflation came in at $16.9 million. The actual winning bid, however, came in much, much higher, hovering around $23.6 million, but still the lowest among the companies that bid. Paradise has received $6 million in government funding and has to cover the rest of the cost itself.