Power surge shuts Lift Station 2; generator reset and data unit replacement underway

Speaker 3, the town’s sanitary/wastewater staff member, told the board the town experienced multiple lift-station alarms in recent weeks and that Lift Station 2 lost power on Oct. 29 after what staff believe was a power surge tied to NIPSCO activity on Highway 12. "We've had some interesting times on our lift stations," Speaker 3 said, describing that the generator at Station 2 had been reset and "was not put at auto." He said a resident first noticed an issue the night of the incident and reported a machine on the roadway.

Eagle Services responded and performed cleaning work that took two days, and staff said there was mostly fluid discharge rather than solids. "We don't see that the overflow was huge," Speaker 3 said, noting the visible impact appeared limited and was cleaned and hosed down. The board was told the verbal dialer was programmed and installed and that a new data unit is required because the existing data logger was not receiving power; the town is still waiting for that unit and for the vendor to confirm power/data restoration.

Board members discussed generator maintenance policy. Speaker 3 told the board the town’s generator service account appears to have been stopped in 2019 and recommended reestablishing a service arrangement and running the generator on a regular cadence so the town can verify it will switch to generator power automatically during an outage. The board asked staff to pursue a vendor callback, reestablish generator service, and provide an update at the next meeting. The board did not take additional formal action at this meeting.