Lift station replacement project finished in Hartley

An infrastructure upgrade project in Hartley has reached the finish line – sort of, anyway.

The new force main and lift station on the city's east side went online last Thursday. The development capped several months of work, which required extensive construction along and under Eighth Avenue East.

According to Hartley Public Works Superintendent Jaron Benz, things went well. In addition to flipping the switch at the new lift station, a manhole located at the intersection of South Eighth Avenue East and Second Street Southeast was replaced on Sept. 29.

"It actually went pretty smoothly," Benz said. "We had to do some extra line jetting on our end, but there wasn't really too much to speak of."

The new lift station replaces the old one located at North Eighth Avenue East and Second Street Northeast that serves a large potion of the northeast quadrant of town. It was built in 1967 and was outdated and undersized.

A crew from the city will demolish the old lift station building. The new equipment is mostly underground and doesn't require an exterior housing structure.

The lift station replacement was only one part of the infrastructure improvement project. This winter, Wisconsin-based Visu-Sewer will complete cure-in-place-pipe (CIPP) lining on a portion of sewer lines in the east side of town.

CIPP lining is a method of trenchless rehabilitation and restoration used in the repair of existing sewer lines. The process uses a textile liner tube and a liquid resin to reseal cracks and other damage, in turn reducing the amount of inflow and infiltration into pipes and lessening the burden on the sewer system.

The CIPP lining addition was made possible thanks to extremely low bids for the lift station upgrade that came in around half the price of what was anticipated. Since the city received a $500,000 Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) to help pay for the new lift station, around 50 percent of that amount would have had to be returned because it wouldn't be needed to pay for the project.

On the engineer's suggestion, the council voted to move forward with CIPP lining to get its money's worth from the CDBG grant. Visu-Sewer's quote was accepted this summer at $427,411.

Benz was happy to have the lift station finished and looked forward to the benefits of the CIPP lining project.

"It feels good to have another one off the checklist," he said.