Committee orders feasibility study comparing Mint Lane pump-station sites after lengthy consent-decree briefing

The Lexington City Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee discussed the Mint Lane pump station, a consent-decree remediation site, and voted Aug. 12 to advance a study comparing two candidate locations for pump-station improvements.

Council Member Savigny introduced the agenda item and said the study was requested because of past contention about the pump station’s location and future sewer-service planning. Director Charlie Martin, director of water quality, told the committee the Mint Lane pump station sits on a tightly constrained 0.08-acre parcel behind Dunbar High School and that it has a history of wet-weather overflows that placed it in a consent decree requiring remediation before December 2030.

“We’re intending to construct a new pump station and wet weather storage tanks within the limits of the existing urban service boundary,” Director Martin said during his presentation, describing a plan to build a diversion pump station and storage tank behind Dunbar High School, then rebuild the existing pump station on its footprint. Martin said the existing dry-weather pumping capacity is sufficient to accept the additional dry-weather flow from Area 1 (an expansion area bounded by Parker’s Mill and Man O’ War), but that wet-weather storage would need to be increased to handle peak storms.

Martin reviewed monitoring logs showing the station cycles normally in dry weather but runs continuously during rain events, which triggers overflows. He said the city’s 2023 sewerability study modeled how Area 1 could be served and that the study’s role was to inform decision-makers, not to set expansion policy. Martin said locating the pump station farther downstream, nearer Mill Ridge Farm and Bowman's Mill Road, could offer hydraulic advantages because it sits lower in the drainage network and could serve more land by gravity, but he cautioned that moving downstream raises questions about how to convey additional flow to the treatment plant and about legal and policy implications tied to the urban service boundary.

Several council members asked about property ownership and acquisition; Martin said the nearest in-boundary site lies on Fayette County Public Schools property and would require negotiations for additional land. He also described tentative engineering estimates provided by consultants: maintaining the dry-weather capacity at 3.6 million gallons per day (MGD), increasing wet-weather storage to roughly 4,800,000 gallons, and a peak diversion rate near 4.0 MGD. Council members raised aesthetic, odor and long-term planning concerns tied to storage-tank size and location.

Council Member Savigny moved that staff prepare “a complete site analysis and cost feasibility study of the two locations, the existing site and downstream at Bowman's Mill Road on Mill Ridge Farm property, that includes future growth of the facility and the region per the master plan for Area 1,” to be delivered to the full council at a regularly scheduled work session by March 1, 2026. Council Member Curtis seconded the motion. The committee voted to advance the study request; the motion passed and will be brought to full council in the form of a resolution for final action.

Budget and schedule notes discussed during the meeting: $2 million is in the FY26 budget for design and property acquisition; the Capital Improvements Program (CIP) lists about $6.19 million for the project next year, for a combined rough project-dollar placeholder of about $8 million in current dollars, though final costs depend on site selection and design.

The committee advanced the request; no final project site selection or construction authorization was made that day.