Residents urged to call 911 when they see any type of issues

An Oncor power outage caused a messy scene for the Colorado City Municipal Water Department over the weekend.

On Saturday, Dec.4, power was lost to the main lift station here in Colorado City causing 1000 gallons of wastewater to spill into Lone Wolf Creek which feeds into the Colorado River.

At approximately 9:00 a.m. on Dec 4, electricity was lost to the lift station causing all systems to shut down including the electronic monitoring devices that are sent to a centralized location, this alarm system is equip with an auto dialer that notifies the police department of any issues with the lift station, but with no power, comes no alarms.
After, Mayor Robert Oliver, got a call reporting the spill; he in turn called the city secretary and who made the call to Jerry Boyd of the Colorado City Municipal Water Department. Boyd manually started the generator that powered the main lift station for 6 hours until Oncor restored power to the three-phase transformer pole and lift station.

Boyd could not stress enough how important it is to call 911 if you see any issues.

What is a main lift station you are wondering? The lift station pumps the wastewater through a pressurized pipe known as a force main, which at a higher elevation transports the wastewater to the ultimate discharge point. A wastewater lift station requires these to store wastewater temporarily. The lift station collection system reservoirs are full, if the pumps lose power the system begins to overfill and overflow.

Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) was notified by Boyd.
“Once the generator starts and the pumps kick in the wastewater moves back into the reservoirs. Once the reservoirs stop running over, we chlorinate everything that is on top of the ground. We do not put chlorine in the creek; we don’t want to kill any fish. Then we walk the creek and the river and pick up any trash and look for fish kill, there was no fish kill,” said Boyd.

Boyd also stated that an approved method by TCEQ is used to calculate how much wastewater is missing. Every gallon of wastewater is monitored and recorded at the city sewer farm.