News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Cookeville Water Quality Control Department will explore changes to its Tennessee Tech Pump Station and storage facility to accommodate future Tech growth.
Director Ronnie Kelly said that Tech shared plans for potential North Willow Avenue development over the next 20 years. He said that because some sewer lines flow to the area the department wanted to look into changes in their preliminary engineering report.
“Let’s add in Tech’s future 20-year growth plan into that and see if it’s going to affect it,” Kelly said. “And can we discharge where we’re planning on discharging it, or are we going to have to split flows and maybe push some of that water back in a different direction.”
Kelly said that the biggest difficulty comes from where the water will discharge. He said that their concern is how the discharge will impact the area and the size of the lines downstream. Kelly said that the department’s engineer will plug in Tech’s future plans to see what changes need to be made.
Kelly said that the new pump station would serve the Tech area and surrounding apartments. He said the older station is set in a sinkhole that gets flooded when there are torrential rains.
“And we have a lot of extra groundwater that gets in,” Kelly said. “So council approved an engineering design to replace the pump station and look at placing a wet weather storage tank at that location.”
Kelly said the report has about a six-month timeline that takes it through different scenarios that at the end of the reporting period will make recommendations about design options and preliminary costs.
