City adds million gallon an hour pump as a boost to levee pumps

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Harrisburg city levee pumps, falling behind in the discharge of water from the city's two drainage areas because rains continue to move in from the west one after the other, wil get some extra relief.

A 1 million gallon an hour pump has been rented from an area farmer and will be put in use at the sewer treatment plant.

Raymond Gunning of the city Water, Sewer and Flood Control Department said he is hopeful the extra pumping capacity will help relieve the backed-up water that now covers Small Street and areas of two shopping centers.

Gunning said the water on the street and parking lots results from the flow of water to the pumping stations having now overflowed nearby retention pools.

"Water seeks its own level," he said. And that level is the now floodwater-covered Small Street area.

"Hopefully the extra million-gallon pump will relive the pressure on these areas," Gunning said.

The city has sandbags available to merchants in the area who want them as an extra precaution, Gunning said.

However, the bags are not filled.

Merchants needing sandbags will need to provide the manpower for filling them at the sewer treatment plant. The city is providing both the empty bags and the sand, he said. The users need to fill the bags and move them to their own site after filling.

The drainage system behind the Harrisburg Levee has been in place since the late 1930s. Water flows to the pumping stations from the West Harrisburg drainage area and the often more problematic Pankey Branch drainage area. Most all the length of Pankey Branch through the city changed from undeveloped area at the time the levee system was erected to heavy development.

When the system was designed, shopping centers did not exist in the area of the pumping station and the design called for water to pool in the area of the levee pumps.

The city has another pumping station on the way, set to be built this summer.

In November, the H. E. Mitchell Co. of Harrisburg was awarded a $1.4 million project to build the new pumping station and a force main to move water from added pumps through the city levee.

The pumps for the pumping station are a major part of the cost, $552,000.

The bill will be paid primarily from the city's Tax Increment Finance District funds, with $200,000 being paid from a federal grant.

The actual total cost of the project is set at $1.7 million.

The design engineering for the project totals $137,000 and construction engineering another $70,000. A contingency fund is included in the total and is set at $70,000. Administration costs, through Southeastern Regional Planning, will be $10,000.

The bidding for the Pankey Branch Pumping Station was the second round of bidding.

The first bids had been rejected by council because of timing: Engineers were concerned work would have progressed by this spring to a point where the levee would have been split open for installation of the force main at the time of normal spring flooding.

The pumping station and force main project is the final - and most expensive - part of $2.4 million in flood control improvements approved in the spring of 2009 by the TIF review panel.

Other projects, already completed, are the enlargement of the impoundment at U.S. Route 45 and Pauper Farm Crossing and a controllable interconnection of the Pankey Branch drainage area and the West Harrisburg drainage area.

All of the projects were prompted by the devastating flooding that occurred after rains of at least 11 1/2 inches March 18 and 19, 2008.