Wastewater Collection and Treatment
DLZ completed a District Plan and preliminary design for the Lakeland Regional Sewer District (RSD) for wastewater collection and treatment.
The Lakeland RSD is located in Kosciusko County, Indiana and includes the following lakes: Shoe, Banning, Irish, Sawmill, Sechrist, Little Barbee, Big Barbee, and Kuhn. The preliminary design included evaluating alternate collection systems, initial sewage booster pump layout, and a preliminary layout of the collection system on 1″=30′ scale drawings, District Plan, Environmental Report, and all documentation for a USDA Rural Development loan application.
The project consisted of the following components:
Final Design
155,000 feet of 2-10-inch low-pressure sewer
1,328 grinder pumps
3 regional lift stations
17,586 feet of 10-inch force main to WWTP
0.4 MGD WWTP
1,800 customers
Some users were counted as individual customers and then considered one. Due to state legislation, some opted out of service under these rules, two examples of significant change.
Delays in Design Duration Attributed to:
Grinder pump procurement process took 16 months longer than anticipated. On May 17, 2012, the process was started and was expected to be accepted by USDA RD by August 1, 2012. USDA RD finally accepted it on December 10, 2013. The client requested the rebidding of GP Procurement two additional times. At times there were unreasonable long delays in this process due to client non-responsiveness.
This delay allowed for numerous revisits, cost estimates, customer count, justification, and re-justification of all design levels by the client. This included request by the client to revisit and research other RSD’s electrical service, thus redesign from electrical service from REMC/NIPSCO provider to electrical service by the individual property owner.
Easements, which were called out to be “blanket” easements from the Master Contract property owners, expanded into a much greater scope. This included numerous mailings and coordination with the attorney, who took over the task of easement acquisition. Easement acquisition also delayed the submittal of the final design to USDA RD.
Through this project’s duration, the Sewer District Board completely changed faces except for two original members, which made managing this project extremely difficult by having to educate each of the new members with the history of the project and why certain decisions were made.
