FORT FRANCES — Fort Frances is spending $125,000 in emergency capital expenditure following the discovery that another sanitary lift station in town has suffered an outage, but the final cost could be higher.
In a report to council from the town's administration, it was discovered on Sunday, September 15, 2024, that the drywell of the Fifth Street lift station, located at 1330 Fifth Street East behind the water treatment plant, had flooded and caused “extensive damage” to the electrical components and pumps within.
The town noted that emergency pumps were secured from Darryl's Custom Landscaping, and then from Atlas Dewatering in Thunder Bay, a temporary bypass was put in place and no damage had been done to local properties.
However, the lift station itself is still out of commission, with the report indicating that three pumps, “as well as all of the electrical components and sensors from within” will now need to be replaced.
At last Monday nights' meeting, Town of Fort Frances operations and facilities manager Travis Rob spoke to council regarding the lift station and repairs, noting in a response to coun. John McTaggart that the $125,000 expenditure is still just an estimate as the town's crews work to figure out what went wrong and get it fixed.
“At this point in time, we do not have true costs,” Rob said.
“It's going to depend largely on how long we have to have rental pumps on site to bypass the lift station. That's going to be a large portion of our costs.”
Noting that the rented pumps are part of the final cost of the repairs, coun. Steve Maki asked Rob why the town wouldn't instead purchase similar pumps outright in order to save money.
Rob noted that as it stands, it's cheaper for the town to continue to rent the pumps in these situations, especially as the company providing them ensures that they are ready to go when needed, something that couldn't be guaranteed if the town owned their own.
“We talked about this a lot the first time we had a lift station fail” Rob said.
“We went back and forth. At the end of the day, the cost to us to rent the pumps is not... an unruly amount of money. We get the pumps, they work, they're serviced, the control systems are updated and modern.
"If we were to buy pumps and we don't use them for a period because we don't have a lift station fail – ideally we never have a lift station fail – but if we aren't using them, then when it does become time to use them, do they work? Are all the systems in place? Are all the components in place? And it is one of those things, for the cost to get them from Thunder Bay, they're always there.
"Atlas Dewatering, this is their business, being ready to respond to events exactly like this. It was, I would say, less than an hour and Atlas was putting together the equipment that we needed. They don't charge a ridiculous amount for rentals. It is probably more cost effective for us to just rent the pumps we need when we need them.”
As much as it is ideal to never have a lift station fail, Rob also noted that this event is “the living embodiment” of the town's infrastructure deficit in response to a question from coun. Mandi Olson, who was looking for a potential status update on the health of the town's lift stations, noting that one other station failed when the town experienced significant flooding in 2022.
“We talk at budget time, outside of budget time, about an infrastructure deficit and a number that's attached to that,” Rob said.
“This is the living embodiment of that infrastructure deficit. All of our lift stations are the same age. They were all put in in the 60s. This is the living embodiment of the infrastructure deficit, right here.”
Olson followed up by asking if the repairs being done to the lift station would be a permanent fix, or more of a “band-aid” to the problem, to which Rob responded that as things currently stand, the town is unsure of why the lift station failed in the first place.
“I would love to sit here and say, 'this is absolutely going to fix the problem,'” he said.
“At this moment in time, we do not know why the lift station failed. I hope that changes as we get further into the repairs and, at this stage, the disassembly.
"We do have, in the same token, an engineering study going on at a couple of our lift stations to look at life cycle upgrades to them, and we talked, in that scope of work, to look and do a bit of a case study on the White Pine [lift station] that failed during the flood in terms of why that failed and what we need to do to protect future lift stations from the same issue.
"Fifth Street lift station failed in exactly the same way as White Pine. The biggest difference was the sun was shining. It was extremely dry when Fifth Street failed, not so much when White Pine failed, and so we have a lot of questions that we don't yet have answers for.”
Olson thanked Rob for his responses, noting that she felt it was important to provide transparency for the public when it came to issues the town faces and spends money on, particularly when it has to do with those under the ground where the progress can;t be as easily observed.
“I think the frustration sometimes that comes from the community is the things that we can't see, that are happening under the ground or perhaps in the lift stations,” she said.
“I know the building right at the four-way on Central, I've been asked a million times what that building is, and I'm like, 'that is pumping sewer and water and we have to have this in good working order.' And it's a substantial cost to the community when there's a fail or an error or a temporary fix that isn't working.
"So I wasn't trying to put you on the spot, but I think it's some real conversations that we need to have at our table. I know infrastructure is an ongoing conversation, but it's been shared a few times at various meetings that we can't see what's happening under the ground, but the result of it we're seeing, which is crappier road conditions, and our sewer lines and water lines are aged.”
Rob noted that the town did receive some coverage from their insurance provider when the White Pine lift station failed, but at this time he is unsure how much, if any, they could receive for the Fifth Street lift station.
Fort Frances Times / Local Journalism Initiative
