Another pump-station project about to start in West Seattle

We mentioned this briefly in coverage of last week’s Fauntleroy Community Association meeting, and today we have full details as Seattle Public Utilities is sending notice to neighbors of its next pump-station project, which will affect Fauntleroy ferry-dock users too, and drivers who use the electric-vehicle-charging stations at the dock.

Next month, SPU will start what could be up to four months of work at its pump station on the south side of the ferry dock:

It’s replacing “a sewer mainline through an underground horizontal drilling operation located along the pedestrian pathway and vehicle-lane area” as well as removing and replacing “mechanical and electrical pump-station components.” It’s a ~$400,000 project, according to online documents from the bidding process.

The project will close the King County Metro-managed parking lot on the southeast side of the dock, which means the five electric-vehicle charging stations in that lot, among the few publicly available in West Seattle, will be unavailable during the project. SPU says they are usually available to the public Mondays-Fridays, 7 am-3 pm. The vehicles that usually use the parking lot, vanpool vans, “will be relocated to designated street parking on Fauntleroy Way SW and SW Wildwood Place,” according to the SPU notice. The southbound bus stop by the lot is to remain open.

The ultimate goal of the upgrade, according to SPU, is to reduce sewer overflows into Puget Sound. We’ve asked a followup question about how many overflows this station, officially known as Pump Station 70, has had. This is a city project/facility, and so it’s separate from the county-owned Barton Pump Station on the other side of the dock, which just finished a multi-year upgrade project last year, and the county’s Murray Pump Station north of nearby Lincoln Park, which is getting upgrades while the combined-sewer-overflow-control facility is built across the street from Lowman Beach.

4 Replies to "Another pump-station project about to start in West Seattle"

  • JanS February 17, 2016 (1:21 am)

    I kinda feel for the people in those houses right there

  • John February 17, 2016 (7:54 am)

    The title of the article made me think a Shell, Exxon, Chevron, etc. was going in there…..  This is simply improvements.  At least it will stop those that use the parking lot as a short-cut.

    • Lee February 24, 2016 (11:45 am)

      How are people using that lot as a short-cut? Do you mean that they’re jumping the ferry line?

      I’ve seen vehicles pull into that lot and dwell there to pick people up (even when it’s restricted for ridesharing only) but I don’t see a problem with that. It’s a sort of impromptu taxi stand, too.

  • Lee February 24, 2016 (11:56 am)

    I’ve emailed the SPU project manager asking about alternative charging arrangements for electric vehicles. These are the only charging stations in city-owned parking lots in West Seattle. The alternatives proposed are too far away and also too expensive to serve as replacements.

    There are two Walgreens locations which offer a single electric vehicle charging station each and either location is over two miles distant from this lot. One of these stations is $2 per hour and the other is $8 per hour. The stations being taken offline are only $2 for up to 24 hours of use.

    There are also outlets in the Westwood Village shopping mall, one of them by the Bank of America. These outlets do not have signs or markings reserving them for EV use. Also, these outlets are unmetered so the mall may be footing the bill for hundreds of dollars in additional electrical service over the course of this SPU project.

    The city could put in a temporary solar-powered and battery-backed charging station in a nearby lot or even on the street. They could arrange for AAA to bring their EV charging truck to recharge vehicles affected by this outage. I don’t think that their proposed approach is acceptable and I’m going to continue pushing them to come up with a better plan.

    Further alternative EVSE details (with pictures) 

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