Downtown Chatham is getting a new sewage pump station.
Tim Sunderland, general manager of the Chatham-Kent Public Utilities Commission, said construction of the new station #5 will begin in late January and should take about nine months to complete. He said the pump station will be relocated from outside the doors of fire station #1 next to the civic centre to the boulevard at the corner of 2nd Street and King Street.
Sunderland said the current pump station needs to be replaced because it's at the end of its lifecycle.
"This is an improvement of the infrastructure that we have for the sanitary sewer. The original pump station was built in 1963 and it's nearing the end of its service life. So, it's a good time to relocate it and improve the infrastructure," said Sunderland.
Sunderland said the current pump station is in an awkward spot and gets in the way of firefighters.
"It's aged out and it's also in a bad location. A lot of coordination has to happen when we do regular and emergency maintenance at that pump station because it impacts fire's egress from fire station #1," he added.
Sunderland said the new pump station won't handle more capacity but it will have more bells and whistles.
"It will still take the service area it takes right now, it's just going to be an improvement in location and pumps and controls and we'll actually have a standby generator at that location so, in a power outage it will actually function still," Sunderland said.
The price tag for the project is nearly $3.1 million. Sunderland said some parking in front of the civic centre will be affected by staging equipment but fire response and traffic shouldn't be.
