On June 28th large amounts of rain hit metro Detroit area. Several areas flooded. At least three wastewater pump stations had electrical, mechanical equipment, and pump issuses preventing them from full operation. Several areas flooded.
I have worked in this field my entire life, have seen this happen before, many times. Have designed response plans and what-if scenarios many times for these situations
So here is the news article right after the storm;
"The Great Lakes Water Authority will conduct an internal investigation into multiple electrical issues at two Detroit pumping stations during last weekend's historic flooding and it intends to seek an independent firm to conduct a separate review.
But GLWA Chief Executive Officer Sue McCormick stressed during a Friday update on the historic southeast Michigan flooding that the two Detroit pump stations "operated as designed" during the "thousand-year rainfall event" that she partially blamed on global warming.
The update comes days after the flooding trenched parts of the region with 7 inches of rain over 12 hours from late Friday into early Saturday.
"We've never seen or experienced anything like this," McCormick said. "In our sector, we know there's always going to be a larger storm and so no matter what we design for, we can come up short."
The rainfall overwhelmed the system and was not caused by any single pumping station or any single element within the regional system, said McCormick, adding she doesn't believe the flood could have been prevented."
Yes, you can come up short. You design pipe and pump sizes so during low flow they don't settle out solids and grit (sand) then during high flows those same pipe sizes can be restrictive. Maybe the flood not prevented but it could have been far less.
That last bolded sentence is playing with words. SINGLE station or element, NO it was several elements, design, and operational FLAWS.
If you read the article you see several failures;
--A vacuum pump spraying water on a circuit breaker, VERY BAD DESIGN!!! You don't put liquid lines anywhere near a circuit breaker!!! I saw a guy almost get killed because of water spraying on electrical panel!!!!! Stupid.
--A pump station with two electrical substations (good design), one station fails the other takes over. That's all no good if you have failures inside the station. Which they did.
--Generator only sized to run two pumps. UNDERSIZED, bad design, generator should power ENTIRE station with all pumps on. And should be automatic!!
OBVIOUSLY SEVERAL FAILURES HERE. FROM DESIGN TO OPERATION. THE TWO SMALLER STATIONS SHOULD HAVE HAD GENERATORS ONSITE. YOU KNOW THE RAIN EVENT IS COMING. IT WAS FORECASTED. YOU EXPECT POWER OUTAGES FROM STORMS!!!! BE READY!!!
So what does the Governor of Michigan do????????????????
Hot Forum Topics
