A catastrophic fire at New York City’s North River wastewater treatment plant on July 20, 2011 caused the shutdown of the plant, and the environmental consequences were stark. On the banks of the Hudson River, the North River plant in Manhattan is one of the city’s 14 sewage treatment plants, treating about 125 million gallons of wastewater every day. With the shutdown, all of this raw sewage was diverted directly into the Hudson and Harlem Rivers, creating an immediate and highly visible emergency.
As firefighters fought to bring the 4-alarm blaze under control, officials from the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) moved quickly. One of the first calls the DEP made was made to Pumping Services, Inc., a New Jersey-based representative for water and wastewater equipment and a distributor for Xylem’s Flygt branded submersible pump products. John Corkery, Pumping Services’ municipal sales manager, remembered receiving the call.
“After understanding the situation, I immediately contacted the Xylem team and determined that we had numerous large Flygt submersible pumps available to help fix the situation – but they were hours away in Ohio and Georgia,” he said.
With the plant’s main pumps out of service, Corkery recommended an emergency “pump-around” to transport raw sewage to the plant’s primary treatment equipment, a necessary but complex undertaking. “We were being asked to lift wastewater 65 feet, so it immediately became a submersible pump application” said Corkery. That’s when he called his colleagues who handle Xylem’s Godwin Pumps.
Piping Critical to Pump-Around
While the Flygt submersible pumps were being sourced, Xylem’s Godwin Pumps team was swinging into action. Godwin Pumps are portable dewatering pumps and are well known in the global market for drainage pump rentals and for being available for emergency response and disaster recovery.
Xylem began to organize equipment and logistics required for immediate shipment. Sales engineer Ryan Booth recalled, “We began to mobilize the high density polyethylene pipe (HDPE) required for the pump-around.” The company maintains a large inventory of HDPE for rental along with fittings, adapters and self-contained fusion machines for on-site pipe fusion and installation. Approximately 9,000 feet of HDPE were needed in addition to the fusion machines and operators required to get the plant up and running again. “The critical mass was getting the pipe here immediately,” said Booth. “The pumps are no good without the pipe.”
Once the DEP authorized the emergency equipment on Thursday night, Xylem trucks hit the road from as far west as Ohio and as far south as South Carolina and began arriving on site on Friday morning, about 10 hours after the notice to proceed with Flygt and Godwin Pumps. Xylem’s Scott Myers took the wheel of one truck, driving through the night from Ohio to bring the pumps to New York.
By Friday morning, in record-breaking heat, Booth had organized the necessary personnel for building the pump-around, and set up a 24-hour operations center to channel information for the DEP and other contractors working at the plant.
In addition to the 18- and 24-inch HDPE piping and valve equipment, there were five 16-inch model CS-3400/250-hp and one 14-inch model CS-3356/175-hp electric submersible Flygt sewage pumps and simplex controls and miles of electric cable in service on-site, each lowered into individual 8-foot wide by 70-foot deep trash-rack channels. Pumping Services and Flygt also provided several large submersible dewatering pumps that were used to remove several feet of residual firefighting water from the pump room. Pumping Services provided start-up services and training to DEP personnel on the operation of this pump-around system.
Sewage Flow Stopped
By 9:30 PM on July 23, the DEP reported that it had succeeded in ending the flow of sewage into the river. The Flygt pumps were operating smoothly and reliably, and each was performing at a rate of 10 MGD. This was good news for the boaters, bathers and business owners who use New York City’s waterways for recreational activities and who in recent years have come to expect a clean environment in the city’s waterways.
“Being there when the customer needs us with the right equipment at the right time has always been our backbone,” said Booth. “Our ability to react and have what they need when they need it is a real value added to our customers. We are known for that,” said Corkery. “We were able to get pumps for this emergency because of the equipment they have available and the people who understand how emergencies come about and how they are dealt with.”
Summing up the response to the emergency, Steve Askew, DEP Plant Superintendent for the North River facility said, “It is really an impressive installation. The timetable that it took to get it here and get it up and running, from the thought process to operation, was literally just a few days.”
“It really was quite a monumental effort,” he said.