By Vicky Wedig
Editor
The Delavan Lake Sanitary District is in the midst of repairs and updates intended to improve the efficiency of its sanitary sewer system.
There’s a lot of projects that we can’t procrastinate any longer,” said DLSD Administrator James DeLuca.
Dam repair
The Sanitary District is spending $3,600 to $4,000 to repair a shaft on Gate No. 3 on Delavan Lake’s dam off Borg Road. DeLuca said the shaft was severely bent, but the cause of the damage is unknown.
He said the rod creaked every time the gate, which maintains lake elevations, was raised or lowered. Staff feared the damaged shaft could cause the gate to get stuck open or closed, he said.
New truck
The district spent about $90,000 on a used vacuum and jetter truck used to clean out sewer lines. A new unit costs about $280,000, DeLuca said.
The district has a trailer-mount jetter that can reach a couple of hundred in a line, but the distance between manholes in some areas is 400 to 400 feet, DeLuca said. The new truck has 500 feet of hose to reach the distance between manholes and avoid sending a man down the hole with a five-gallon bucket to clean out the solids that build up in the line, he said.
“The main function is safety and efficiency,” he said.
The truck has a vacuum that removes the sludge when it gets too thick in the line and limits “confined space entry” that is unpleasant and less safe for employees, DeLuca said. He said it can clean out the muck in the bottom of a manhole in 10 minutes compared with about two hours it would take to do it the “archaic way.”
DeLuca said the truck was a backup for a larger municipality and had only 1,000 hours and 5,000 miles on it.
“They just didn’t use it, so we purchased it from a supplier out of Milwaukee,” he said.
Lift Station 8
The district is seeking bids for a rehabilitation project on Lift Station 8 on South Shore Drive. The project is expected to go out to bid this week with bid opening set for Nov. 14.
DeLuca said the lift station is a deep wet well where sewage collects about 32 feet under ground. The station includes a dry pit at about the same depth where the pumps and motors are located. The district is converting the pit to a submersible pump pumping station that can be monitored online, he said. The dry pit requires a two- to three-man crew to enter the site with harnesses and tripods to maintain it. They may also have to install platform gates to ensure the safety of the workers.
The project is expected to improve efficiency, minimize maintenance and, again, limit confined space entry, DeLuca said.
Geneva Landings
The Sanitary District is in the midst of a $70,000 to $80,000 project to replace a section of sewer line and rehabilitate manholes in a portion of the sewer system that serves the Geneva Landings and Delavan Club condominiums. DeLuca said the Geneva Landings privately owned that portion of the system but wanted to dedicate it to the Sanitary District.
The district inspected the system before accepting it and needed to bring it up to standards. He said manholes are being rehabilitated and a section of sewer line that had sunk is being replaced.
Lift Station 7
The Sanitary District is in litigation over Lift Station 7 where DeLuca said the landowner damaged some of the district’s infrastructure.
An Alliant Energy transformer sits on the district’s easement on the landowner’s property that allows it access to the station, he said. Because of the transformer’s location, the district’s equipment can’t fit entirely on the easement to get to the station.
