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Generators'
location cited
in sewage spill
Chicago Tribune
- 7/9
After
a power failure last year at a Lake Bluff pumping plant caused
nearly 300,000 gallons of raw sewage to spill into Lake Michigan,
officials bought a pair of mobile generators to prevent it from
happening again.
But
power failures last weekend sent more than 110,000 gallons of
wastewater into the lake as North Shore Sanitary District workers
scrambled to drive one of the generators to the site and hook
it up--a process that took nearly three hours.
"We have to be better prepared because we can't afford to
have hundreds of thousands of gallons of bacteria seeping into
Lake Michigan," state Sen. Susan Garrett (D-Lake Forest)
said Tuesday.
On
Tuesday, Brian Jensen, the sanitary district's general manager,
said the agency plans to keep one of the mobile generators in
Lake Bluff instead of at its Gurnee plant.
"Instead
of taking three hours, it will only take us 20 minutes to start
it," he said. "But people should remember if we hadn't
purchased this generator, we would have overflowed for 21 more
hours."
Harold
Rafson, an environmental engineer who regularly attends the district's
board meetings, criticized it for not having the generator stationed
at the Lake Bluff pumping plant.
"The
question is why was it parked in Gurnee when there's no power
outages happening there, but the power situation in Lake Bluff
is very tenuous," said Rafson, a Highland Park resident.
Officials
cited a lack of space for not having the mobile units at the district's
four lakefront pumping stations. Each weighs about 92,000 pounds
and is about 45-feet long and 8-feet wide, Jensen said.
"At
these lakefront pumping stations, land is scarce, and that's the
problem," he said. "There's no physical room for them."
The
district purchased the mobile units for $1 million following last
year's power failures, which ComEd blamed on storms.
The
Lake Bluff pumping station had a power failure about 6 a.m. Saturday
that caused about 33,000 gallons to spill before the mobile generator
was turned on around 8:50 a.m. The power failed again Sunday,
and although it was restored in minutes, another 80,000 gallons
of wastewater spilled.
A
pumping station in Lake Forest also lost power Saturday, letting
about 244,000 gallons of wastewater into the lake.
One
of the portable generators is in Highland Park; the other had
been kept in Gurnee at one of its three waste-treatment plants
is located.
The
three-hour delay restoring power to the Lake Bluff site was caused
by poor driving conditions as well as the need to remove downed
tree limbs that blocked the road, Jensen said. It also took time
to set up the mobile unit, he said.
"What
you have is 28 cables that have to be pushed into a socket and
turned on," Jensen said. "So between getting down there
and connecting it to the pumping station and turning the generator
on ... it took close to three hours."
By
the time power was restored and the untreated sewage had spilled
into the lake, Lake County Health Department had decided to close
most public beaches in the area. Two beaches--one in Highland
Park and the other at Illinois Beach State Park--remained closed
Tuesday.
On
Tuesday, The district began building a concrete pad, cable supports
and security fencing to house one of the generators in Lake Bluff
on Tuesday, at an estimated cost of $100,000, Jensen said.
Garrett
wondered why a permanent generator couldn't be installed at the
Lake Bluff facility. Jensen estimated that would cost at least
$5 million.
Garrett
said she wants to meet with officials from the sanitary district
and ComEd to discuss solutions.
"I
think it's clear the outages are coming at a more frequent level,
and local authorities have to do everything they can to be prepared,"
she said.
Meanwhile,
Lake Bluff Village Administrator Kent Street said that although
the mobile unit might be considered an eyesore, it could be an
acceptable trade-off for residents concerned about lake pollution.
"There
are certain aesthetic concerns, no doubt, but I think everyone
will agree that with the health benefits, we need to have it there,"
Street said.
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