Aging infrastructure is a concern for many municipalities. Old systems face several problems, from outdated, difficult-to-use technology to physical components wearing down and hard to repair. While these issues are challenging enough to deal with, it is nothing compared to system failure. The Village of Maroa in Illinois was faced with such a problem when one of their 40-plus-year-old lift stations failed. This lift station was critical as it serviced about half of the village, including the high school. The Village of Maroa needed a fast-tracked solution to get them back online. Fortunately, Metropolitan Industries, Inc. is capable of helping municipalities in emergencies such as this.
Metropolitan worked with the village’s consultant (ABM Industries) to convert their old dry-pit/wet pit design to a submersible configuration. We provided a design including a new concrete wet well, three submersible pumps, and a new control and valve building, including new VFDs, controls, and flow meters. Metropolitan can provide complete prefabricated, custom-built housed solutions in our Romeoville, IL facility from inception to implementation, leaving municipalities to focus on operating their systems while saving the village hassle, time, and money. Our systems arrive at job sites pre-piped, pre-wired, pre-tested, and ready for immediate field connection. One benefit of utilizing a prefabricated housed system is the potential elimination of some confined space concerns, making it a safer work environment. Additionally, the village decided to switch from a two-pump setup to a three-pump configuration. The existing system used two pumps with custom 2-speed motors. After reviewing the flow range, it was decided to upgrade to a variable speed triplex configuration, which would maximize flow range and flexibility while providing significant redundancy.
Controls were upgraded to our standard LMS II controller. The LMS II level management system is a pre-programmed level controller utilizing an Allen-Bradley Micrologix PLC and a color touch screen operator interface. The system allows users to alter pump options, transducer options, and more, providing access to SCADA features. The system is a menu-configurable, constant speed, pump-down level controller, allowing for the control of one to three pumps, with optional pre-programmed configurations for single and dual-level transducers, 0-20 MA flow meter input, and a completely redundant float backup controller. The LMS II comes MetroCloud ready, making it simple to upgrade municipalities to MetroCloud, Metropolitan’s dedicated cloud SCADA water and wastewater monitoring service. Also provided as standard with the LMS II is DNP protocol, therefore providing end-users with the latest technology in station monitoring, allowing operators to monitor their system remotely without missing any data.
