Bypass System At Onondaga County Pump Station Enables Completion Of Vital Upgrades

When the West Side sewage pump station in Onondaga County, New York, prepared to undergo its first major upgrade in over 30 years, the project required a bypass system to move a peak flow of 30 million gallons per day (MGD). C.O. Falter Construction was named the bypass contractor for the project and worked with Xylem to design and install a temporary system to convey the full amount of flow.

The West Side pump station is the second largest pump station in Onondaga County, taking in about 8 million gallons of sewage a day from communities in the western suburbs, then pumping it to a nearby wastewater treatment plant. The expansion and upgrades to the West Side pump station would add more sewer capacity to help reduce sewage overflows into Lake Onondaga during heavy rains. The project would also expand the pump station’s capacity and increase its efficiency.

While the initial design called for using the station’s existing pumps, during a plan review, a dewatering application engineer with Xylem calculated that the existing pumps would only bear 19 MGD of water.