Ongoing wastewater improvements by Columbus Light and Water could become $400,000 more expensive if old pumps at the 22nd Street South lift station don’t work properly.
During Columbus Light and Water’s meeting Thursday, the utility board approved advertising bids for the potential replacement of four pumps at the lift station if they do not integrate properly once the station comes back online.
“We’re asking right now to be able to bid for that, to advertise for (new pumps) just in case,” General Manager Angela Verdell told board members. “We don’t know if we’re going to need them until the station is up and running to make sure that the old pumps are going to connect in with the new parts of the control house that we put in place.”
Renovations at the station began in 2022 as part of $1 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds the city allocated to CLW for wastewater infrastructure improvements, board member Robert Smith said.
Those funds were split between two main projects: the 22nd Street South lift station, which handles about two-thirds of the city’s wastewater, and additional renovation work on the lift station at MLK Drive.
Verdell said the 22nd Street South lift station is more than 40 years old and needs upgrades. Currently, the site is offline while construction continues with a bypass system that pumps wastewater out to the Reynolds R. Ridgley Wastewater Treatment Plant at Yorkville Road, she said.
Those projects were expected to cost closer to $2 million when funds were originally allocated, with matching funds from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality covering the difference.
But costs could balloon to $2.4 million if the four pumps at the station need to be replaced, Verdell said.
Lift stations carry wastewater through centrifugal pumps to lift the water through a pipe to a higher elevation at the utility company’s treatment plant.
Verdell said once the station is back online, CLW engineers will be testing and reinstalling the previous site’s pumps to determine their effectiveness with the site’s new equipment.
Stephanie Gale, CLW board member, asked Verdell during the meeting if those pumps are still viable, given their age.
“Do we know how many times those pumps have been reviewed?” Gale asked.
Verdell said the pumps were originally placed into service in the late 1970s and have undergone extensive repairs over the years, but engineers won’t know until they try to install them back in the lift station if they are compatible with the new equipment.
“The engineers will take all of that into consideration,” Verdell told the board. “Not only can they work, but are they going to be a detriment to the new equipment that we’re putting in place.”
If the replacements are deemed necessary, Verdell said she would return with bids CLW receives and seek approval from the board at a later meeting.
Smith said he will support funding replacement pumps in the future and believes CLW should have already approved replacing the pumps rather than trying to integrate the old ones because of the site’s importance to the city.
“All they’ve done over the years (is) just patched them and patched them. You can just patch for so long,” Smith said. “… They need to be replaced, because all they’ve been doing is just using a band-aid approach.”
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