Cracked pipe caused Swampscott pump station crisis

SWAMPSCOTT – Town officials said Thursday that a cracked pipe in the wastewater pump station appears to have caused the catastrophic failure that flooded the building with raw sewage and required the town to truck its sewage to Lynn for three days.But many questions, such as the cost of the fix, and the timeline for repairs – could take a long time to answer.”There is a break in a pipe that is in the pumping station in the area of where the pumps are ? that brings the waste between the pumps that are on the [lowest floor] and the pipe to Lynn,” said Town Administrator Andrew Maylor Thursday. “We opened a claim and will have (our) insurance company take a look and then have them assess what happened ? the bypass system will stay in place until we can fix the problem – more likely to be weeks (rather) than days.”The Humphrey Street pumping station collects all of the town’s sewage – approximately 2 million gallons on a rainy day – and three pumps send the wastewater to be treated in Lynn, according to Director of Public Works Gino Cresto.Workers responding to an alarm on 7:30 a.m. Sunday found that the lowest level of the building – two stories below ground where the pumps are located – was completely flooded after a “catastrophic failure” of the system, Maylor said. Tanker trucks on Sunday began relaying the town’s sewage from the Humphrey Street site to Lynn’s wastewater treatment facility on Commercial Street.Workers installed a secondary pumping system Tuesday that essentially bypassed the pumping station and restored the normal wastewater flow to Lynn. Meanwhile, the trucks drained the 18-foot-deep pool of raw sewage that had backed-up into the pumping station so that workers could evaluate the equipment on Thursday.Maylor said Thursday afternoon that the receding sewage exposed a significant crack in one of the pipes that carried the sewage through the pipes, spilling sewage and triggering the alarm. Workers had recently worked on that pipe to add another pump to the system, he said.But the financial impact and responsibility for the failure remains to be determined.”We’ve got to figure out what works, what doesn’t, what is in danger of not working much longer,” Maylor said. “We’re still in the phase of trying to figure that [all] out.”Only a few residents in the immediate area reported temporary disruptions of sewer service, Maylor told selectmen at their Monday evening meeting. Thursday, he said that neighbors have also endured a noxious smell and noise from truck traffic but no further disruptions in sewer service.