Siting a Regional Pump Station—Harder Than It Looks

Identifying a suitable site for a pump station while accounting for future service expansion can be a challenging task due to availability of land. Combined with a 66-in. water line route study in a diverse urban environment to supply the pump station and provide maximum benefit for two wholesale water providers (to extend service to their customers) presents a myriad of challenges due to the existing utilities, facilities, roadways, and residences. This paper presents how the NHCRWA Project 23 Route Study and Pump Station Siting effectively manages the challenge through a method of evaluation criteria, matrices, and scoring. Due to the pump station siting requirements, an appropriate pump station site had to be identified early in the process. The concurrent 66-in. water line route study employed a two-tier evaluation approach to more efficiently determine the optimal route from over 25 variations. Additionally, optimal locations were determined for the NHCRWA and the city of Houston to extend distribution lines to their respective customers in the efforts to serve surface water and reduce groundwater usage.