MSD turned on the Watkins Creek pump station this morning.
MSD turned on the Watkins Creek pump station this morning. The pump station, which is located in in the 11-thousand block of Riverview Drive in Spanish Lake, was turned off on Tuesday as a safety precaution due to rising flood waters. A pump station is part of the sewer collection system. Normally, wastewater travels to treatment plants via sewers powered by simple gravity. In low elevation areas this is not possible and these stations are used to pump wastewater to treatment plants. The Watkins Creek station pumps to the Bissell Point wastewater treatment plant. When the Mississippi River level reached 40 feet and flooded the surrounding area, the sewer system that the Watkins Creek station pumps from also flooded. At that point, the pumps were no longer able to function properly. Additionally, when similar flooding took place in 1993, an electrical fire occurred. For these reasons, power was turned off and the station was shut down. The river has dropped enough to allow MSD to turn the station back on. The Watkins Creek pump station handles approximately of 2.7 million gallons of wastewater per day. This wastewater was released into the Mississippi River while the pump station was not operating. Residents are asked avoid contact with flood waters in the area. The situation was reported to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) as required.