Gulfport City workers are about at the halfway point of a major downtown sewer project.
Monroe Roark
Dirt is flying at the corner of 58th Street and Shore Boulevard in front of the Gulfport Recreation Center as a lift station gets a major overhaul. The deadline for completing the project is Christmas, according to Gulfport’s public works director Tom Nicholls. City workers are about at the halfway point of a major downtown sewer project.
This work was mandated as a result of litigation after some sewer spills in 2016, Nicholls said, calling it a “bypass project” that will somewhat change the way sewage gets moved out of Gulfport.
In the past the process has been for this lift station to pump the sewage from the southwest part of the city to the other lift station, and from there to St. Petersburg.
“It is kind of redundant,” said Nicholls. “Right now it’s a gravity system. It pumps it a certain distance and then goes by gravity and runs into lift station one. When you have heavy rains and get all that extra water in the system, it’s not moving so it can get backed up.”
This $3 million project will eliminate the problem, with a force main and all new pumps slated for installation.
Work started in January, as the City of Gulfport had a delay of almost one year while waiting for the pumps and generators to arrive.
“We had two years which we thought was plenty of time,” said Nicholls. “Under the consent decree we have to be done by Christmas.”
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