WESTFIELD – The Flood Control Commission conducted a special meeting Tuesday night to review and approve plans to revamp the Williams Riding Way pump station.
The pump station, located a short distance off Meadow Street, is a major component in the city’s flood control program and is capable of pumping millions of gallons of flood water through a 60-inch pipe into the Westfield River.
City Engineer Mark Cressotti and Deputy Superintendent Casey Berube, who is the director of the city’s stormwater management program, attended the special meeting to present details of the reconstruction and refurbishment of the pump station project, to cost about a million dollars.
“I want to get this out as quickly as possible,” Cressotti said, “and get construction started. I don’t want to hold this up further. We’ve been waiting two years to get bids out.”
The engineering assessment of the facility and plans to replace or refurbish equipment is being developed by Tighe & Bond.
Cressotti said deficiencies in the project design will be addressed through change orders to the reconstruction contract.
Commission members discussed approving the plans as presents with several in favor of moving the project to the next stage, advertising the contract bid. Other members of the commission raised a number of concerns about the plans to refurbish the facility built 60 years ago and requested another session with Tighe & Bond engineers at the board’s Dec. 18th meeting.
Several of those concerns included overlaying the existing concrete roof with a membrane, and replacing bypass valves and check valves, as well as insuring that the huge pipes exiting the plant have not deteriorated.
“The facility has not been repaired in 50 or 60 years,” Commissioner John Moriarty said. “The contractor will have to exercise all of the valves and test the pumps.”
Cressotti said the problem with a live test is that the volume of water needed is present only during extreme food situations.
Commissioner Henry Warchol said he is concerned about the sewer bypass line and a number of other issues.
The pump station is currently connected to both the city’s stormwater system and city sewer system. Both of those systems are in a bypass mode, with stormwater flowing by gravity into the river and sewerage, from most of the city’s downtown area, to the treatment plant.
The station has the capability of pumping both stormwater and sewerage into the Westfield River during major flooding events. A back-flow protection device on the stormwater drainage system would close to prevent flood water from backing up through drainage pipes, causing flooding of low-lying areas protected by the levee.
Those same flood waters could shut down the sewerage treatment plant, causing effluent to back up in sewer lines, threatening to flood residences and commercial building in the same low-lying neighborhoods with raw sewerage. The city, in a flood emergency, would have the ability to pump both stormwater and sewerage directly into the flooded Westfield River.
“Do you want another session with the Tighe & Bond engineers where you will have these questions addressed?” Cressotti asked the board. The consensus was to schedule that meeting for the commission’s December session.
