PATA History Pages

Sewer Overflow Problems In Pickerington

Answers to Questions Posed by PATA

Dear PATA Webmaster,

Thank you for you inquiring about the recent Ice Storm in Pickerington and the resulting damage to some homes.

As you know, Central Ohio suffered a huge winter storm on the night of December 22nd and December 23rd. At around 3 A.M. on the 23rd most of Pickerington lost its electrical power.

In regard to the Cherry Hill sub-division, their sanitary sewer system relies on a lift station to pump their sewage to the treatment plant. Without power the lift station's reservoir filled and started backing up into the Cherry Hill resident's basements around 10 A.M. on the 23rd. I believe at last count this included around a dozen or so homes.

The backups occurred in varying degrees because of two factors. The first is that about four years ago this same lift station failed because of a pump controller failure. The sewer treatment plant operator neglected to notice the warning message on his computer screen and nothing was done to correct the controller failure before we started having backups into the Cherry Hill resident's basements. Since, in this case, the electrical power was still on in the area the sump pumps in these homes pumped raw sewage out into the streets of Cherry Hill. To correct this problem the city at the time installed check valves or anti-backflow valves. Some of those homes that had these back flow valves installed also had sanitary sewer backups in their basements this time as well. However the valves did prevent some of the amount of backup volume.

The second factor was that when the power was out the sump pumps in these homes were not working and some of this backup was from the sump pump holes over flowing.

The Service committee of The Pickerington City Council will be meeting on January 13th at 7:30 P.M. On the agenda we are scheduled to discuss these sewer backup issues. Since this is a committee I can only discuss my desires and what I support in regard to this recent sewer problem. I am sure I will get support from the other two members, Mitch O'Brien and Doug Parker.

1. I will move to have the CIP project WW-05 moved from 2006 and to go out to bids as soon as possible (hopefully this spring). This project will serve the Cherry Hill sub-division with a gravity line down to the "D" line interceptor line thus eliminating the mechanical device to get the waste to the treatment plant.

This will correct two problems that have long frustrated our Pickerington residents with sanitary sewer backups. The Cherry Hill Lift station actually pumps up and into the 8" sewer line that serves the Colony Park Drive residents. This 8" line is undersized which is not only my opinion but the opinion of some of those residents that live on Colony Park Drive and who have had backups in the past. This project WW-05 will divert the Cherry Hill sewage (281 homes) directly to the force main thus correcting many of the Colony Park Drive sewer backups.

This project will eliminate the problems with pump controllers failing or the loss of electric to drive these pump motors. It will not correct roots from getting into the sewer lines and clogging lines in that fashion.

2. Obviously the city tried to get a backup power source to pump the Cherry Hill lift station. Canal Winchester did offer to loan us their portable generator after they had pumped their lift station at The Villages at Sycamore Creek, and the Pickerington workers tried to hook it up to our lift station. These lift stations have three phase motors in them and our lift station was not wired the same as Canal's lift station. By the time they could get the unit re-wired the electrical power was back on.

Learning from our mistakes; I will move to survey the Canal Winchester and County Utilities lift stations and see if we can get all of these stations and their motors wired the same so that we can use the four portable generators that were at our disposal.

3. I want to have the city staff investigate the purchase of a gasoline powered pump that we can pump these lift station reservoirs out when we might have a pump or pump controller problem. In a preliminary report I do understand they exist. Backup power would not have helped in the Cherry Hill failure of four years ago. This gasoline pump would have worked in both of these failures.

4. I will move to amend our sub-division approval process in that we shall require now and in the future that sub-divisions that require a sewer lift station to pump the waste from their new sub-divisions be required to have a standby power source available at these lift stations.

5. I will support and encourage our City Staff and the manager to work out cooperative agreements with the County Utilities and Canal Winchester to establish sewer districts and make an effort to eliminate these lift stations with gravity lines where ever possible.

6. The City Manager has offered from her discretionary budget to fund up to $2,500 per home for sewer backup cleanup and home owner insurance deductibles. This requires NO Council action but I believe it has strong supported by the members of our council.

I hope this answers any questions that you or the WEB visitors might have.

Thank You,

Ted Hackworth
Service Committee Chairman