Council inspects lagoon progress

Monday morning was bright and cold as the Moorcroft Town Council gathered at the municipal lagoon with Public Works Director Cory Allison and HDR Engineer Heath Turbiville to examine the progress of the state-mandated $3 million upgrade project thus far.

Councilman Dale Petersen spoke to the unevenness of the safety poles next to each valve, “We have a multimillion dollar project and we can’t even take pride enough to line up the poles and valves. What’s that all about? ”

Admitting it’s unlikely many people will ever see the workmanship, he spoke again to the implied care taken with details. Glenn later asked about the same poles (also used as gig poles) on the cell side of the aeration valves instead of outside to prevent damage from vehicles: “It gets a little sloppy when you pull in here.”

Petersen agreed: “It would make more sense to me to put these on the [out]side.” Turbiville admitted there was, at present, no plan to set protection on the landside of the heavy valves, opining that there will not be a great deal of traffic along the area when the project is complete.

Petersen also asked for itemized costs, which were not to hand, but Turbiville assured the council he could gather that information after the walkthrough and deliver it to them, though, he noted, “quite a bit of it is just a lump sum”.

Councilman Ben Glenn noted the nylon cordage currently in use to tie the aeration lines to the poles on either side of cell two, although specifications require steel cable; Turbiville said the cordage was only temporary. This concern, though, was compounded by other materials examined and subsequently considered by the council as perhaps not as long wearing as they should be: “We don’t want the city crew to have to go out and have to pull all of these in the middle of winter.”

Turbiville told Petersen that he would review the specifications and materials before answering these further enquiries.

The aeration system currently being installed in the Moorcroft lagoon does not lay the pipe under the waves, rather the lines are suspended above with only long weighted t-sections resting first above and then on the sludge over time. According to Turbiville, this is a commonly used adaptation to prevent the potential problem of melting aeration piping due to clogging as has happened here and also allows for easier upkeep.

The air pumped into these lines from the two new large blowers recently installed in the block compressor building can range in temperatures around 250ᵒ maintaining continual circulation within the cells.

“There were seven or eight of the little ones and we had to change the motors all the time,” Glenn reminisced about the several small compressors that these two have replaced.

These blowers were to have been started last week to begin aeration in cell two, Turbiville said, but initiation was postponed due to the company representative falling ill and testing positive for COVID-19. The contractor hopes to have the system started by the end of this week.

After cells one and two are brought online within the next few weeks, the chlorination facility will be built near the compressor building and the replacement of the compressor building roof will be finished.

The gathering ended with Turbiville asking the governing body how he can further assist with the process during this project. Petersen responded, “We’ve talked about oversight. My first thought is if we had your guy out here looking at [these guard poles], isn’t that something he should have picked up on? It’s those types of things that I think we really need to consider. I know that no one’s ever going to see this stuff, but it shows the big picture. We have expenditures and we expect to get a little better quality.”

This was an opinion with which Glenn readily concurred.