Ensuring transparency, Chestermere Mayor Jeff Colvin provided residents with a Facebook update regarding Lift Station 13.
“This one was hard to believe and has taken a bit to put into words,” Colvin said. “I’ll just rip the band-aid off. Wow, we spent almost $20 million and use about 3 per cent of capacity. It’s rather unbelievable that this was built to the extreme overcapacity it was.”
Colvin was shocked and said in the Facebook post that he has never seen something like that done before.
Approximately 3 per cent of the capacity is used, with one of four pumps being utilized that pumps at 350 litres a second, and approximately 50 litres a second of sewer.
“Obviously, that doesn’t work, so we must hold and pump in batches,” Colvin said.
Holding and pumping in batches creates a gas issue, and to fix the issue, oxygen is pumped into the pipeline.
“We spend approximately $1 million a year to deal with corrective measures for this being done so excessively. Which I’m sure we spend more,” Colvin said.
The initial building quote was $8.5 million; however, the project was finished at over $18 million.
Part one of Colvin’s plan is to make an assessment of other lift stations and if the flow can come to Lift Station 13, followed by a reassessment of Lift Station 13 and the pipelines.
Part two of the plan is to get more flow, redirect Centron from going under the lake to Lift Station 10 by Chestermere Blvd. and Rainbow Road and run the sewer line to Lift Station 13.
Part two of Colvin’s plan would serve east acreages along the way, getting their flow, and getting the Webster development flow to sewer to Lift Station 13.
“It is appalling that this sewer lift station was built like this. It’s dangerous and makes no sense and yet we built it,” Colvin said. “I plan to bring the motion for more oversight to council to create a bylaw making this type of situation not able to happen again.”
