TAMPA, Fla. — On Wednesday, the City of Tampa unveiled upgrades to a decades-old wastewater pumping station.
Officials said the Bayshore Wastewater Pumping Station was originally placed into service in 1955 and is one of the city’s oldest and most critical pieces of wastewater infrastructure.
Watch report from Mary O'Connell
“At that time, it was standard engineering practice to put all the electrical controls that ran the station below grade,” said Eric Weiss, the City’s Wastewater Department Director.
Tampa Bay 28 got an inside look.
Some improvements included converting to a modern submersible pumping station and additional pumps.
"We took all that electrical gear out below grade in the basement that could be susceptible to storm surge and hurricane impacts, put it in a new building above grade, and then put a ten-foot tall wall, one-foot thick, reinforced concrete wall around it with a submarine-style door, and that’s designed to withstand any impact of a future hurricane event,” said Weiss.
Weiss explained there are other sustainability and resiliency aspects to this project.
"One of them is our new standby generator, which happens if TECO loses power, we still have wastewater, so we have to pump it to the plant,” said Weiss. "Our new generator has a very large storage tank on it. It can give us power for up to three days without TECO before refueling.”
Mayor Jane Castor said it means fewer overflows, better storm resilience, and safer streets for the surrounding community.
“It will process about three million gallons of wastewater a day,” said Castor.
The city said the $17 million project is one of many funded by the nearly $3 billion PIPES program.
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