Pump Station & Storage Reservoirs

Lincoln-Pipestone Rural Water System (LPRW) serves approximately 4,500 customers, including 32 towns as bulk customers, in ten southwest Minnesota counties. Traditionally, LPRW treated water from their Holland water source using a reverse osmosis (RO) treatment process to remove nitrate in parallel with pressure filters for iron and manganese removal. When the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency notified LPRW that their RO discharge permit would be discontinued, LPRW needed to secure a replacement treatment process or replacement water source.

To fill this need, LPRW and DGR Engineering (DGR) undertook the Edgerton Pump Station, Reservoirs, and Pipeline project. The improvements allowed LPRW to replace the source capacity lost at the Holland water source with their water allocation from Lewis & Clark Regional Water System. LPRW is one of the founding members of Lewis & Clark, and LPRW’s ability to adapt to an alternative water source is a credit to the organization’s foresight and resiliency.

DGR tackled the unique challenge of fundamentally changing operations for the south half of LPRW’s system. LPRW’s original Edgerton Pump Station received water from the Holland WTP and pumped it east to serve customers and to fill the Chandler Elevated Tank. A new Edgerton Pump Station was designed to handle all of the same demands as the original Edgerton Pump Station and to pump water back toward the Holland WTP to serve territory previously upstream of the original Edgerton Pump Station.

Lewis & Clark has a metering facility for Rock County Rural Water District at the City of Magnolia, MN and agreed to sell water to LPRW from that facility. DGR designed 21 miles of 14-inch diameter PVC pipeline to deliver water from Lewis & Clark’s meter station to the new Edgerton Pump Station. The pipeline design includes provisions for a future booster station, which will be needed if LPRW purchases more water from Lewis & Clark in the future.

During preliminary planning, the City of Edgerton requested a bulk water service connection from LPRW. The pipeline was intentionally routed to pass near the city’s well building for a service connection to the city. A related project for a meter/pump station for the city service is currently under construction.

The pipeline delivers water to two 400,000-gallon, glass-fused-to-steel ground storage reservoirs at the Edgerton Pump Station site. The reservoirs provide flow equalization and improve pump station operability and reliability. Two reservoirs allow for redundancy in case one reservoir is out of service for maintenance or repairs.
The new Edgerton pump station consists of seven vertical multistage pumps which serve three separate discharge headers, and the station includes provisions for increasing the capacity in the future. Special consideration was given to the pipe and valve configuration so pumps can be used for multiple headers for redundancy. The station also is able to fill the reservoirs from the Holland WTP in case of source interruption from Lewis & Clark.

DGR worked closely with LPRW to incorporate preferences for station layout, pump size selection, and station capability options. DGR designed the control system and worked with multiple SCADA providers to coordinate control integration for the new facility and for communications with other water systems.

Total construction cost of the pump station, reservoirs, and pipeline project was $5.1 million, which was financed using a combination of USDA Rural Development loan and Minnesota Public Facilities Authority Point Source Implementation Grant (PSIG) funding. DGR worked with LPRW to secure funding and administer state prevailing wage requirements dictated by the PSIG funding. The new Edgerton Pump Station will allow LPRW to meet current and future water demands and provide their customers with reliable, high quality water.

Click here to read this story in the newsletter.