The Silicon Valley Clean Water (SVCW) Commission is moving forward with plans that will replace three of the four pump stations and a force main that transports wastewater for most of southern San Mateo County to the treatment plant at Redwood Shores.
In addition to the replacement of the Belmont, Redwood City and Menlo Park pump stations, the fourth one — serving San Carlos — will be decommissioned. The San Carlos pump station ties into the same conveyance piping as the Belmont force main that will be upgraded, which will carry sewage from both San Carlos and Belmont by gravity into the new tunnel.
The four-member SVCW Commission on July 12 authorized Manager Teresa Herrera to issue requests for qualifications to entities that would both design and build the pump station and force main projects. It’s anticipated that a successful firm will be selected in February 2019 and that about three years of construction would finish in the fall of 2022, with precise scheduling to be coordinated around other work.
These projects are part of SVCW’s Regional Environmental Sewer Conveyance Upgrade (RESCU) Program, which has been ongoing since 2014. Major milestones were reached in April 2017 with certification of the environmental impact report (EIR) and the start of two major projects, agravity pipeline and projects at the front of the treatment plant itself.
The entire program is being undertaken to serve 220,000 customers in areas from Belmont south to Menlo Park and west to Woodside and Portola Valley.
The gravity pipeline project includes the replacement of the 48-inch and 54- inch force main segments between Bair Island and the treatment plant at 1400 Radio Road, Redwood City, and will include tunneling under Redwood Shores Parkway using a Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM). The Front-of-Plant project, which started this month, encompasses the receiving lift station, headworks, the influent connector pipeline, and other support facilities.
A breakdown of the improvements:
Belmont Force Main Improvements
- The Belmont Force Main component consists of lining the existing force main that conveys the wastewater flow from the City of Belmont to the SVCW system.
Belmont Pump Station Renovation
- The pump station at Belmont is past the point of its useful life and its pumps are not sized appropriately for Belmont’s future conveyance system flow rates and pressures. The Belmont Pump Station Renovation will rehabilitate the pump station by replacing the existing pumps with pumps that are appropriate for future flow rates and pressures. The electrical system for the pump station will also be rehabilitated.
San Carlos Pump Station Repurposing
- Since the force main that currently conveys wastewater to the SVCW treatment plant would be replaced with a gravity pipeline, the existing San Carlos Pump Station will no longer be needed. At the location of the existing pump station, improvements will be needed to connect the flow from San Carlos and Belmont to the new gravity pipeline. The San Carlos Pump Station Repurposing component will install the piping and make improvements on the site to take the existing pump station off line, provide metering and sampling of the San Carlos and Belmont flows, and connect the two pipelines to the gravity pipeline.
Redwood City Pump Station Improvements
- At the location of the existing Redwood City Pump Station on Maple Street, a new pump station will be built to pump the wastewater flow from Redwood City into the SVCW conveyance system.
- A new screening facility will be included at the Redwood City Pump Station site. The screening facility will be constructed upstream of the new pump station to provide protection of the new pumps from debris in the wastewater that could damage the pumps.
Menlo Park Pump Station Improvements
- The Menlo Park Pump Station is past the point of its useful life and its pumps are not sized appropriately for Menlo Park’s future conveyance system flows and pressures. The Menlo Park Pump Station Improvements will include new pumps, piping and valves that are suitable for the anticipated future flow rates. The electrical system for the pump station will also be rehabilitated.
- The rehabilitated pump station will remain within the boundaries of the existing pump station site.
The budget for these projects is $53 million.
The Commission also approved a new task order with Collaborative Strategies Consulting, Inc., for project management services for all the projects, a role it has been performing since 2014.