Milford to draw from reserve account to fix sewage screw pumps at ageing sewer plant

A working sewer screw pump is helping carry the load while Milford waits for a custom-manufactured screw pump to be delivered.

 

The town needs to spend about $274,000 to replace a screw pump at the sewer plant but says the expense should not affect sewer rates.

Instead, the project can be funded from a reserve account made up mostly of revenue from a sewer agreement with Hopkinton, Finance Committee Chairman Marc Schaen said.

“The intent is to rebuild the (treatment) facility at no cost to the town,” Schaen said, and replacing the broken screw pump is one step along that path.

The broken equipment, called a screw pump, pulls wastewater from gravity-driven sewer pipes up 40 feet to be treated, Sewer plant Superintendent John Mainini said.

“It just snapped,” Mainini said of a section of pipe near the top of the pump that broke last month.

The screw pump probably became corroded, although a definitive cause of its breaking is difficult to determine, he said.

Mainini said the failure did not affect sewer plant service, and workers installed a backup pump that can manage the 6 million gallons a day of wastewater the broken pump handled. The town has put a rush order on a replacement, but it is expected to take five months to be custom manufactured and installed.

“The impact is money,” Mainini said, but the department has been able to build up $5 million for projects such as this.

Finance Committee Vice Chairman Robert DeVita said funding the new pump may require a transfer between accounts but shouldn’t require the town to set aside more money or raise rates.

The department is in the middle of a multi-year process to replace the town’s five screw pumps. Two new ones have been installed so far, Mainini said.

“They do them one at a time, and this one wasn’t scheduled for a couple years,” Schaen said.

The broken one was only seven years old, while the others were 25 years old. They have a life expectancy of 10 years, Mainini said.

“We do get more years out of them than we’re supposed to,” he said, crediting regular maintenance.

Brian Benson can be reached at             508-634-7582       or bbenson@wickedlocal.com.

Milford to fix sewage screw pumps at ageing sewer plant

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