In the few years since we’ve lived in our home on Winter Springs Boulevard, we’ve had the lift station manhole in our yard fail three times. While some spills were minor, other spills have been catastrophic. The last spill in March of 2024 was over 12,000 gallons (reported).
Upon calling attention to this spill to residents on community Facebook groups, making a report with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and speaking to multiple news outlets, the city took initiative to prioritize fixing these ongoing failures and ordered a permanent bypass pump in case of pump failure or power outage. (Related story: Winter Springs to install bypass pump after wastewater lift station failure) A mobile backup and new generator were placed on site of the pump station post Ian when the station was flooded and failed, but with the last failure being unrelated to flooding or power, clearly more needed done.
This week, the Utility Superintendent for Winter Springs, Clifton Mullis, knocked on my door to let me know his crews were going to begin work on installing the permanent backup pump and some of his guys would be in my yard checking the lift station and pipes. Over the course of the next few days, the project became less than a simple install of the permanent bypass pump.
Disconnecting pipes in preparation of the bypass hooking up, lead to finding failures within the pipes. Our infrastructure is old, we know there are failures happening regularly. It’s evident when we see washout on our roads, bridges, and yards caused by holes in these pipes. Once they had the pipe’s issues exposed, a washout sinkhole formed. Not knowing how much more failure they may uncover; they brought in a large utility crew and basically every piece of equipment the city has on hand to mitigate any possible spills including mobile bypass pumps and three pump trucks. They were NOT going to allow another catastrophic spill from any of the nearby life stations.
Over the coming days, I checked in a lot with the city, our hired engineering firm Corollo, and
Veolia. They were very forthcoming with information on the setbacks they’ve experienced while working to get the permanent bypass installed. In the meantime, they have pipes rerouted and pumped by the bypass while getting new pipes in and the ground stabilized. It looks like it will be a few more days of work, but hopefully they are past the setbacks that the failing pipes caused.
While this is just one of many problems with our infrastructure and hopefully not a Band-Aid that will come off in due time, it does seem like the immediate risk of spills from this particular pump station and the lift stations surrounding it will for the time be mitigated.
Additionally, more improvements will eventually be made to this pump station. It's location right on Howell Creek (and next to my yard) mean that with heavy flooding, the entire pump station is at risk of being underwater. In the next phase of improvements, a grant has been obtained to demo the existing site and raise it significantly to reduce the risk of the station being under water. I am waiting for an update on this step of the plan.
The waste water infrastructures have failed and effected more than just me. It's in need of a complete overhaul and not just fixing thing as they fail. This was a fight I took on before entering the race for Commissioner, but it's a fight I'll continue fighting for all of you.
Sarah
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