New pump station to be completed by monsoon in July

pump station is expected to fix the recurring problem. abc-7’s darren hunt has been covering this stormwater project since it broke ground a year and a half ago … he is live now with the latest … darren. bob/ashlie, el paso water utilities told me today the 11- million dollar magnolia pump station … located off i-10 near piedras, should be finished by arrival of this year’s monsoon in july. it’s billed the most important stormwater project under construction: “one of the signature sights of this storm has been the flooding on i-10 at piedras … traffic was backed up for hours, much of the day in fact … ” since storm 2006, preventing flooding on i-10 has been one of the biggest challenges for the stormwater utility. “looks like we are kind of in lake, i-10 west .” enter the new multi-millio dollar magnolia pump station. it will pump water from i-10, to the rio grande. “interstate 10 is built on an elevated platform, so water that falls on the mountain runs downhill toward the freeway but cannot cross the elevated road bed to get to the river.” this youtube video by bath engineering explains the issue. “when stormwater fills th stilling basin, the pump station will transfer the water to a new force main … the force main will carry the water under pressure to the river.” “it’s got a gigantic economic impact, it’s huge … our plan was to be done for monsoon of 2016 and we will.” alan shubert is v-p of operations for el paso water utilities. “magnolia will move around 14 cubic feet per second, which amounts to millions of gallons per day … this is probably the biggest victory that the stormwater utility has.” “when you say victory, what d you mean by that? i mean that it won’t flood routinely … right now, before we started this project, the gateways and the freeway flooded with a two-year frequency storm, it was very routine … if and when it floods in the future it should be far between events for that to happen and hopefully i won’t see it again.” shubert told me there’s always chance of a 100-year flood, so he can’t promise the freeway will never ever flood again. but he’s confident this pump station will keep it from happening as often. bob/ashlie.