The Lacamas Creek Pump Station failed Saturday morning, sending a backup of sewage into Lacamas Creek and onto a nearby walking trail.
Both the main pump and backup pump failed Saturday morning, and Sam Adams, utilities manager for Camas, said there is a bypass pump system hooked up to a generator at the moment.
“That’s running currently,” he said. “We’re ordering a backup pump to the backup pump.”
The pump station serves part of downtown area and part of the Hills at Round Lake neighborhood. Adams said the failure won’t affect residents.
The pumps were removed from the station Tuesday afternoon and were going to be inspected, Adams said, adding that one of them had a seal failure that caused it to stop working.
As of Tuesday, part of the trail near the Northeast Third Avenue loop trailhead was roped off, and is expected to remain closed off for the next couple of days. Adams said that due to the recent heavy rain, that part of the trail had been flooded before the pump station failure, so it wasn’t getting much use.
“With trail being flooded, there’s not a lot of cleanup to do,” Adams said. “Over the next several days, it will dissipate.”
Adams said officials have to let the creek get rid of the sewage on its own.
The city worked with Washington State Department of Ecology and Clark County Public Health officials at the site, and Adams said the county is expected to send out a release about the backup sometime this week.
Adams said the age of one of the pumps could’ve been a cause of the failure, as the older pump is about 25 years old. He added that the shelf life of pumps is usually around 20 years.
“We stay on top of them, rebuild them over the years,” he said. “That’s why we have the other pump in there.”
The backup pump is about three years old. Adams said the city already had plans to replace the older pump in the coming weeks. Once it is removed from the station, the city will send the two pumps to be inspected and possibly repaired.
“First, we’ll make an assessment with what’s wrong with it,” he said. “If (the older pump is) in dire straights, we won’t replace it.”
The station itself is slated to be abandoned and replaced with a new pump station in the next two years, Adams said.
