GAINESVILLE – The Hall County School Board approved a request of $50,000 Monday evening to replace a pair of sewer pumps that failed at White Sulphur Elementary School recently.
The two pumps are designed to work in redundancy according to Matt Cox, Executive Director of Facilities and Construction for the school system. When one pump fails the other is designed to activate until the failed pump can be repaired.
When asked if the heavy rains associated with Tropical Storm Irma last month contributed to the failure he said he did not believe so.
“It was just a coincidence,” Cox said. “Apparently one had failed and we weren’t aware of it. Then the second one failed and that’s kind of where we are.”
Superintendent Will Schofield said, “The pumps are 14-years old; they’re supposed to be redundant but we didn’t have an alarm system on there. We could probably get them fixed but…the recommendation is we put in new pumps at this time.”
Cox said 14-years ago the school connected to the sewer system and the pumps were a part of that project. He said an alarm will be part of the new pumps’ arrangement.
He also told board members that part of the project expense would include improving access to the pump house location. “We’re basically going to take this opportunity…to get a better driveway, better access down there. Part of our issue is we didn’t have good access. So this would include that driveway and a fence around the unit.”
Cox said a sewerage spill or overflow situation never occurred but added that the replacement pumps would be online within the week.
The $50,000 for the project will be provided by SPLOST IV funds.
http://accesswdun.com/article/2017/10/597111/hall-schools-move-quickly-to-replace-failed-sewer-pumps-at-white-sulphur-elementary