Chestermere has a number of lift stations – varying in size and location throughout the city. The most recently constructed sits on land south down Rainbow Road just north of Range Road 240 – Lift Station 13.
Although from an outside glance, Lift Station 13 appears to be completed, a recent interview with Chestermere Utilities Inc. CEO, Leigh-Anne Palter, shed some light on the situation with Lift Station 13.
“What a lift station does is not very elegant. You have two ways of moving sanitary liquid. You hope to move it by gravity, but the geography of this area is not helpful in that regard. There are a lot of high spots and low spots and as we don’t treat of the sewage here, it all goes back to Calgary to be treated, so we have to get it from here to Calgary. We actually have fourteen lift stations, but one of them isn’t operational right now, to help us with that process of collecting from gravity mains that are probably in the front of your house, to a central place and then we use pumps to move it. And the goal is to take all these smaller collector systems and move it to the central point where we have bigger pumps and we push it all the way back to Calgary”, explained Palter.
As it is right now, the main discharge point for Chestermere is at lift station 10, which is near Chestermere Blvd. and Rainbow Road. “All of the lift stations around the city come to lift station 10 and then the waste is all pushed back to Calgary from there, adds Palter.
Palter then gave a quick estimate saying that,” we spend $275,000 a year just in power and natural gas to run those lift stations. It’s a significant expense”.
As Chestermere Utilities Inc. has a contact with EPCOR, it is the EPCOR staff that checks and maintains the lift stations. “They go around and check all the systems. There is a wet well with a giant pump in it and they all have back up generators on them, every one of them does, and they are all remotely monitored”.
So, as it is today, that is how the system in Chestermere is operating. But what is up with lift station 13?
“Where we are with lift station 13 is that it is almost nearly finished construction. There are some finishing things that are happening inside of the building. I’ve heard the rumour that some think it is a new office – it is not. We’re not moving. It would not be conducive to a comfortable habitat for anyone. It’s much prettier than any of the other stations because it is going to be in the middle of a residential neighbourhood, so that was part of the plan”, explains Palter.
With the inside almost nearly completion as well, Palter confirms that it will be a while still before it’s operational due to the connecting lines required to move the waste back to Calgary.
“The first pipeline we need to build is going to be in Rainbow Road and it will take some of the waste from lift station 10 and we have to bring it down, we have to bring it to a certain capacity or volume of waste. We also need to build a pipeline out of the station back to Calgary. We were very nearly ready to lease designs and go to tender on those two projects but they have been delayed a little bit. The reason for the delay was that we had some landowner issues – getting access because we need permission to work on people’s property and so on. And in the mean time, the world around us changed a lot. So now we have to build from here (lift station 13) to lift station 10 – which we are just redesigning and hopefully we’re not very far away from having that redesign done and similarly we’re redesigning the pipeline back to Calgary as well”, adds the CEO.
“The pipeline to Calgary is a massive undertaking. Part of the challenge was that the design all the way back to Calgary was in the road. A good chunk of it was in Rocky View County’s roads and we need their permission to do that. That permission was looking like it was going to be difficult to secure, they (Rocky View County) didn’t say no, but again, given the place and time we were, we just sort of challenged ourselves to say ‘do we really need to do that right now or can we come up with an alternate design that would allow the plant to become functional and limit the scope and the cost and make for a simpler project in the near term. Those are the goals we are trying to achieve with the redesign that we’re doing. But because we are taking the time for the redesign, Lift Station 13 is going to sit there quiet for a little while”.
Obviously, Lift Station 13 was planned and constructed under the idea that it was needed to service the residents of the City of Chestermere. I asked the CUI CEO if the currently system, with Lift Station 13 not operating, is sufficient for the city.
“On a good day, things operate well. What we’re always concerned with are what we call ‘wet weather events’. The system is over capacity and 364 days of the year it’s going to operate fine. But what we keep a very close eye on is when we see storms coming. The system needs Lift Station 13”.
Palter adds that it is their hope to have the resign process completed and the project out for tender by this time next year.
