Located in Ohio, the City of Lorain is working toward eliminating sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs) and strengthening the long-term reliability of their wastewater collection system. This required rehabilitating and upgrading the Pearl Avenue and Tacoma Avenue Pump Stations as well as unlocking additional usable storage in the Tacoma Retention Basin. They engaged our team to deliver engineering design and construction support services for this project.
We began by conducting targeted flow monitoring in the area’s tributary to the Pearl Avenue and Tacoma Avenue Pump Stations then used the data to update and recalibrate the City's hydraulic model. Through the model, we identified downstream constraints and unused system capacity. Combined with condition assessments and pump testing, it showed that the pumps at Tacoma Avenue were undersized and that inflow, not force main capacity, was driving overflow risk.
Our final design includes new pumps at both pump stations, not only increasing reliability by providing improved solids-handling capabilities but also increasing the capacity of the Tacoma Avenue pumps to fully utilize the downstream force main and collection system. With this increase in pumping capacity, we used the hydraulic model to determine what size to make the new Tacoma Basin Pump Station. When combined with the newly elevated overflow weir in Tacoma Retention Basin, this pump station will aid the City in managing peak wet weather flows by gaining significant SSO storage volume that was previously unusable.
By addressing site-specific needs within the broader collection system context, the resulting improvements will advance the City’s objectives and deliver reliable performance for years to come.
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