Crews set up to repair aging sewer lift station in Laguna Beach
Crews and construction equipment have taken up space in the public parking lot across Forest Avenue from the Lumberyard restaurant in Laguna Beach in the past few weeks.
The city is rehabilitating an aging sewer lift station that pumps about 1 million gallons of wastewater per day — half of Laguna’s overall daily total — to a coastal treatment plant in Aliso Canyon, said David Shissler, the city’s director of water quality.
The lift station wet well, built in the 1980s, has become dilapidated and needs repair, the city’s website said.
Lift stations are low points in a gravity-flow sewer system, where incoming sewage is pumped from a well to a higher grade to continue the gravity flow to a treatment plant. A wet well is an area of a pump station where wastewater collects.
In the coming months, workers will add new sewer pipelines, a temporary sewage bypass pumping system, and a system that will capture the unpleasant methane and sulfide fumes that occasionally are emitted in that area, among other improvements, according to the website.
The $2.9-million project will add about 30 years of life to the lift station, according to the city’s website.
Construction began three weeks ago and is expected to continue through May. Work caused the temporary loss of 36 of the 84 public parking spaces in the Lumberyard lot, Shissler said.
The Saturday morning farmers market has temporarily moved from the Lumberyard lot to the nearby Forest/Laguna Canyon lot, Shissler said.
Twitter: @AldertonBryce
