Pump issues' at wastewater plant go back to July 2022 On Saturday morning, the city asked residents to limit their water use until 6 p.m. to lessen the environmental impacts from sewage overflows into Harbor Cove and the outfall pipe three miles offshore due to “pump issues” at the Water Pollution Control Facility on Essex Avenue.To get more news about Screw pump rotor, you can visit hw-screwpump.com official website. These issues were not new. A problem with one of the plant’s two influent screw pumps that bring sewage into the facility were identified in July. At cost of $400,000 from the city’s Sewer Enterprise Fund, the city had ordered four permanent replacement suction lift pumps in September that were scheduled to be installed this March, according to the city’s environmental engineer, Dana Martin. Then, last Thursday, the plant’s second screw pump failed. The cascade of events led to two sewer overflow events Saturday, one into Harbor Cove that lasted more than three hours and another involving partially treated wastewater being discharged through the plant’s outfall pipe into Massachusetts Bay from 11 a.m. through Sunday at 2 a.m. Martin said in an email the second influent screw pump at the plant, which went into service in 1984, “failed due to age.” This happened just before the weekend’s extreme cold snap Friday night into Saturday. The plant switched to a bypass system powered by rental pumps, but those failed as well in the frigid cold. Martin said the Department of Public Works worked with plant operator Veolia Water and vendors to find alternative bypass pumps and stage them throughout the plant’s campus. “During the downtime without influent pumps,” Martin said, “wastewater backed up in the collection system and some flow was discharged through the permitted outfall … located in Harbor Cove,” Martin said. During the transition in pumps, the treatment process was bypassed, and untreated and partially treated sewage was discharged through the plant’s outfall pipe three miles offshore, Martin said. Martin said on Monday it was unknown what the flow volumes were and if there might be any state or federal regulatory repercussions. In a detailed timeline, Martin said in an email the wastewater plant uses two screw pumps to bring sewage into the plant. The plant runs one screw pump at a time, and screw pump No. 1 was taken offline in July after “numerous failures.” The city, through Veolia, leased four suction lift pumps from pump rental company Rent to Rain to temporarily replace screw pump No. 1, which was later deemed unreliable.