Relief Interceptor Builds Sanitary Sewer Capacity (Source: ENR Texas)

By Louise Poirier

Crews dealt with less-than-ideal soil conditions and avoided the use of a mechanical bypass on a project that is improving the city of Fort Worth’s Sycamore Creek Sanitary Sewer Interceptor system, which has a current capacity of around 48 million gallons per day.

Several years ago, when the Sycamore Creek interceptor was having problems with sanitary sewer overflows, Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam Inc. (LAN) came on board to do some investigation and design point repairs at several locations to reduce inflow and infiltration and improve pipe conditions, explains Greg Vaughn, senior project manager with LAN.

“LAN determined what the capacity was going to be after those internal repairs were completed. Upon further investigation, it was discovered that after the repairs would be completed, the system would not be able to meet future flows for that interceptor basin,” he says. “Additionally, rehabilitation was going be expensive, especially considering the necessity of bypass pumping at these flow rates.”

LAN’s team was re-tasked with designing a parallel interceptor to handle the future capacity, including the ability to divert flow out of the existing interceptor so that rehabilitation of certain segments could be completed without wastewater bypass pumping, Vaughn says.