West Seattle pump stations: Morgan agenda tonight; trouble earlier

Tonight when Morgan Community Association meets at 7 pm at The Kenney, the agenda includes an update on the area pump stations operated by King County Wastewater Treatment. That’s been planned for quite some time – but there’s something new to talk about, after this news release sent out by the county today, regarding trouble with a “tidal surge” – read on:

Two wastewater pump stations in West Seattle are again operating normally after a freak tide surge forced water from Puget Sound into the sewer system, straining capacity at one station and causing a possible overflow at another.

It’s believed that a higher than normal tide combined with a strong low pressure weather system created a tide surge that pushed sea water into King County’s Barton Pump Station on the north side of the Fauntleroy ferry dock about 7:30 a.m.

The deluged Barton station forced high volumes of sea water and wastewater through a 6,250-foot pipeline to the county’s Murray Avenue Pump Station at Lowman Beach Park, where operators at King County’s South Treatment Plant in Renton detected a possible overflow shortly after 8 a.m.

Wastewater Treatment Division crews responding to the overflow alert reported that the tide was the highest they’d ever seen near the pump station. Crews are unable to determine at this time if any raw sewage overflowed from the inundated pump station into Puget Sound and will continue investigating.

As a precautionary measure, county employees took water quality samples, posted warning signs on the beach and notified health and regulatory agencies about the possible overflow. Both pump stations are undamaged and operating normally. Crews will continue to closely monitor the system over the next several days.

The Barton and Murray Avenue pump stations are part of the regional wastewater system that pumps flows to King County’s West Point Treatment Plant in Seattle. High tides are becoming a greater concern for county wastewater planners as engineers predict that climate change will produce global rises in sea level in addition to wetter winters in the Pacific Northwest, both of which could have an impact on the normal operation of sewer facilities in the Puget Sound region. Division planners are already taking steps to protect the valuable assets in its system.

This may explain a report we got from a WSB’er this morning about a slick of some sort spotted in the Sound, visible from the Morgan hill – we went down to try to photograph it and couldn’t see it. We’ll be calling King County Wastewater momentarily to talk with them about that and any further information that’s available. 4:09 PM: We talked with Annie Kolb-Nelson at KCWTD – she hadn’t heard of the slick but is checking on it; she also says they have not yet determined for sure whether there was or wasn’t a spill.

1 Reply to "West Seattle pump stations: Morgan agenda tonight; trouble earlier"

  • jay January 20, 2010 (5:40 pm)

    Wow, I laughed at the “freak tide surge” initially, but I just checked the tide charts and NOAA reports that there was a 13.90 high tide this morning at 8am. That might actually qualify as a freak event. The Duwamish was quite high all the way down here in Tukwila.

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