Break in main causes sewer system overflow
A rupture in the force main that’s the conduit for a large percentage of the county’s wastewater led to an unpermitted discharge into the Lake Catherine watershed Thursday.
The break was downstream of the Gulpha Creek pump station off Catherine Heights road. Hot Springs Utilities Director Monty Ledbetter said Friday that the pump station had to be taken out of service while the broken main section was being replaced.
That caused flow from the 30-inch diameter gravity line upstream of the pump station to back up and come out of the manhole next to Gulpha Creek. Ledbetter said the pump station was taken out of service Thursday morning and put back online by the afternoon. Wastewater continued to flow from the manhole until the pump station cleared flow that had backed up in the gravity line.
Ledbetter estimated that as much as half of the regional wastewater system’s flow passes through the pump station, which sits at the low point of the Gulpha Creek Basin collection area. It collects wastewater from downtown Hot Springs and areas north and east of the city.
“We shut the pump station off, and it overflows into Spencer Bay area when we’re doing that,” Ledbetter said. “Then we make the repair and get it back on. It takes several hours to pump the system back down. It’s usually about a 10-hour process from when it breaks to when everything is back to normal. We had it fixed shortly after lunch yesterday. It takes a while for it to pump down and catch back up.”
He said materials for main repairs are kept at the utilities department on Adam Street. Catherine Heights was closed