New tank at Lowman Beach? Overflow options discussed tonight

| Environment | Utilities | West Seattle news

At the two pump stations that bookend Lincoln Park, King County Wastewater Treatment has to cut down the number of times that large quantities of wastewater flows into Puget Sound because the system’s overtaxed. They’ve chosen three options for each of the areas (“basins”) feeding those two stations. A week and a half ago, they presented the three options for the Barton (by the ferry dock) “basin” (WSB coverage here); tonight, it’s the presentation for the three options for the Murray (Lowman Beach) “basin,” three different underground-storage options (explanatory links at bottom of this page), one involving the station site (county photo at left), Lowman Beach Park itself. The county says it’s got to choose one within a few months, so this may be your last best chance to ask the experts your questions. 6 pm, Southwest Community Center (map). Side note: The county has an online map showing the status at its “combined sewer overflow” spots like the 2 by Lincoln Park, and it suggests there’s been an overflow at Murray in the past 48 hours; we’ll check on that.

good March 29, 2010 (9:21 am)

Reading those it shows there really aren’t easy solutions. I am grateful that they are working on it. One just has to see all the recent whale sightings (seals and otters too) to be concerned about millions of gallons of waste in that water. As well, we go to Lowman Beach to throw rocks all the time. I can’t wait to wash hands afterwords – never thought of it like that before this happened.

Mike March 29, 2010 (11:59 am)

An easy fix is to not have all the condos, mega homes and apartment complexes being built. Those are what add the extra flow that requires the extra pump stations and larger pipes to handle it all. The more we build up and out, the more of this we’ll see.

Gregory March 29, 2010 (2:15 pm)

The key is changing how the city deals with storm runoff. We need to create retention ponds and system which retain the water further inland so runoff is minimal. The city and county have plans for these kinds of systems in new developments, but we have to begin looking at how we implement such in older areas as well.

WSB March 29, 2010 (2:52 pm)

Gregory – you may know that type of option is one of the three alternatives proposed for the Barton “basin,” but for some reason not for this one (hope to find that out tonight).

ellen March 29, 2010 (3:39 pm)

I might be five steps behind here, but isn’t part of the problem that they are having to pump combined waste water, where “combined” means sewer plus storm runoff? If they could separate more of the storm runoff from the combined sewer, perhaps that would alleviate sewer spills. Unless they have to treat storm runoff too?

I know in my little neighborhood we have problems with the “50 year” rains where several houses have suffered flood damage because the City can’t or won’t hook up the storm drains to the King County storm water system.

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