UPDATED: Pumping Station Floods But Residential Service Uninterrupted

On Tuesday the town installed a by-pass around the flooded pumping station, routing wastewater from homes and businesses to the Lynn Treatment plant.

The by-pass gives the crews a chance to drain the flooded basement at the Humphrey Street pumping station, Town Administrator Andrew Maylor said late Tuesday afternoon.

He expected that by today the building would be emptied of the 18 feet of wastewater that had filled not only the basement but also half the floor above it.

Once the building is dry crews can investigate what triggered the catastrophic failure.

The system failure flooded the station with wastewater Sunday morning but service at homes continued.

That’s because the  was pumping 2 million gallons a day or about 60,000 gallons of wastewater an hour to on-site container trucks 24 hours a day, said and DPW Director Gino Cresta.

The trucks ferry wastewater off-site, to the Lynn treatment plant, get pumped out and return to Swampscott for more wastewater.

The town placed an emergency order for by-pass parts to a New Jersey vendor.

The equipment arrived and was installed at 11 am Tuesday, Maylor said.

Maylor said earlier that there would be no way of knowing what caused the failure until the basement is bailed out and dry.

The town administrator said the failure came as a big surprise because the system was well maintained and funded by users — ratepayers on the municipal sewer system.

Maylor said the town is working with the state Department of Environmental Protection and they know of no health hazards associated with the flooding.

Nonetheless, the town has closed Eisman’s and Whale beaches as a precaution, Maylor said.

As of 5 p.m. Monday, the wastewater was about 18-feet deep at the station, flooding the basement and half of the next floor.

That level has been steady and even dropped a few inches, Cresta said.

It’s too early to determine how much it will cost to respond to and fix the problem, Maylor said.

Fifteen crew members made up of DPW and contract workers are on the job.

Cresta was called to the pumping station early Sunday morning, about 7 a.m., and decided to keep the system flowing through pumping and trucking rather than shutting off service to residents.

Homes depend on the pumping station to use their showers and bathrooms. 

That strategy has worked well, Maylor said.

The town administrator said the problem does not stem from a station pump failure because the material is not backing up. It is still flowing out of the building.

The town has just about completed a $300,000 upgrade to the pumping mechanism at the station.

The town administrator said this upgrade was part of a regular maintenance program.

“This is not a function of an aged infrastructure,” he said.

Maylor expects to have more information later tomorrow.