COURT HOUSE – At its May 2 meeting, Middle Township Committee approved an award to B&H Contracting Inc. for phase II of the municipality’s multiyear program of pump station improvements. The amount of the award is not to exceed $2.1 million.
In September 2019, the municipality engaged the firm of Mott MacDonald to evaluate its aging sewer system, parts of which were first installed over 30 years ago. As a result of that engagement, a plan was formulated for modernizing the municipality’s 21 municipal sanitary pump stations in groups of four or five at a time.
The need to upgrade the sewer system pump stations has been building for years but it became especially urgent in 2018 and 2019, when spiking fees from the county Municipal Utilities Authority (MUA) placed large, unexpected burdens on the municipal budget. One culprit in the fee increases was stormwater intrusion into the sanitary sewer system, increasing the flow rate to the MUA.
While reducing infiltration into the sewer system is one goal for the pump station modernization effort, another is the practical need to maintain the system effectively.
At the time of the 2021 bond ordinance that will support phase II efforts, Mayor Timothy Donohue said that municipal employees were barely able to keep the pump stations running, and any additional time before repair created added risk of failure.
