The Yukon pump station rebuild is done. Superintendent Mark Batorski delivered the news to Farmington's Water Pollution Control Authority on July 8 with photos attached to his report: a wet well that used to show infiltration leaks, including what he described as a ton of them around the rings, now epoxy-coated and visibly cleaner; a new touchscreen control panel; three new variable-frequency drives. The old drives are sitting at the plant waiting to be scrapped. They "pretty much look like a Frankenstein lab," Batorski said, nearly as tall as the meeting room's divider. The new ones are smaller than a refrigerator.
The station matters more than most. It is the one that previously suffered a force-main collapse, and Batorski put it on the short list of stations "you don't want to have issues with." Last month, when the rebuild turned up corroded pipe, the authority opted to line the well now rather than dig it open again later. Batorski repeated the arithmetic for the board in July: bypassing the station would have cost about $90,000, the epoxy cost about $60,000, and doing it down the road would have run about $150,000. The whole package, he said, should help the infrastructure "make it another 30 or 40 years."
The new controls are the less visible half of the upgrade. The old radio-based alarm system forced staff to pick and choose which failures the plant would even hear about. The new controller can carry as many alarms as the crew wants to add, and the pumps now sit on rails with probably four or five layered fail-safes for level control, by Batorski's count. Future station upgrades, he added, will move from radio to cellular telemetry, because the current radio path can lose signal when summer leaves fill in between antennas.
The last piece went in with the kind of effort nobody sees. To install the new flow meter, the crew had to drain 30,000 gallons out of the force main into trucks while keeping up with the station's incoming flow. They came in at two in the morning and finished around 6:30. What remains is calibration and wiring. The station itself, Batorski told the board, is 100 percent done.
The plant the station feeds had a month worth mentioning too. The facility ran 2.8 million gallons of flow in June, with a single-storm peak of 5.5 million, removed 98.7 percent of biochemical oxygen demand and 99.9 percent of suspended solids, and finished 62 pounds under its nitrogen permit. "We actually had one of the lowest Junes we've ever had on record here for nitrogen," Batorski told the authority, crediting low flows in a dry month. The plant is running well enough that the usual summer aeration-tank cleaning is being let go to August, maybe September. Farmington's plant has made a habit of this: as of April it had run six straight years under its nitrogen limit.
The next decision is already in the pipeline. The authority's engineering consultant is finishing the final survey for the MDC pump station upgrade, and Batorski expects "a pretty hard number" on cost by the September meeting. A second station at West Farms is in design. Work at the Patrick station, its force main and possibly converting its pumps, sits on the maybe list, depending on what the prices come back looking like. Those numbers land on a system whose ratepayers absorbed a 3 percent rate increase in March without a single objection.
The authority took no votes in July beyond approving its minutes and adjourning, and it does not meet in August. When it reconvenes in September, the Yukon file closes and the MDC file opens.
This coverage is supported by Farmington Storage, 155 Scott Swamp Road, the only storage facility in Connecticut with Museum air. A pump station gets rebuilt precisely so nobody has to think about it for 30 years. Farmington Storage runs on the same theory: the right conditions now, at institutional grade, and the future takes care of itself. 860.777.4001 📦
Jack Beckett has read enough operating reports to know that 99.9 percent removal efficiency is the quietest kind of good news a town gets. He is on his second coffee. The minutes were short. ☕
*The Farmington Mercury covers the town nobody else is covering: the zoning board that runs late, the police log that is technically public record but functionally invisible, the sewer authority quietly deciding how another 30 years of infrastructure gets paid for. We publish slowly, deliberately, and without apology. Always last to breaking news, thorough about everything else. Find us at farmingtonmercury.com and tell your neighbors. #WeAreFarmington 📰