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Backup Power Averts Wastewater Backup

September 22, 2022 Steve Schwaller

(Milford)– Officials with the Iowa Great Lakes Sanitary District say they’re seeing the benefits of generators that were installed in recent years at waste water lift stations around the area. Case in point was an incident Wednesday afternoon when there was a power outage for about a half hour on the east side of East Lake Okoboji. Steve Anderson, Superintendent of the Iowa Great Lakes Sanitary District, says it would have taken five lift stations off line had it not been for the back up power…

“That power outage was only for about 30 minutes but, and, you know, we were at the low time in flow for our system, but there was about 5,000 gallons during that 30 minutes that was being pumped even with power through the system over there so instead of that ending up in basements or a potential bypass to the lake, the water continued to flow to the wastewater plant and nobody really knew that there was an issue there with those lift stations, so.”

Anderson adds the lift stations are regularly tested under generator power to make sure there are no issues.