Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/231222
Sarasota News Leader December 20, 2013 Page 33 The new lift station is required under a consent order with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, following substantial sewage spills into the bayou from Lift Station 7. After discovering Lift Station 7 was built on private property, the city opted to build Lift Station 87 in Luke Wood Park, south of U.S. 41 where the Tamiami Trail and U.S. 301 split. looking at water depth and sediment consistency, and he probed for hard rock underneath. He also undertook a geophysical survey, looking for anomalies in the rock under the bayou — either voids or concentrations of material harder than limestone. Lastly, he did "sonic refraction" testing around the abutments of the Osprey Avenue bridge. However, work halted when the contractor walked off the project. AECOM Technology Corp. was hired by the city to develop a plan to install a sewer pipe under the bayou to feed Lift Station 87. The microtunneling technique failed, resulting in the discharge of a fluid into the bayou. Lawsuits are on-going. His findings held some surprises. Kimberlie Staheli, president of Staheli Trenchless Consultants and a nationally recognized expert in microtunneling, evaluated the attempt made by the first contractor. She found wildly excessive pressures were placed on the drilling rig because the cutting head was insufficiently lubricated. One of Garland's tasks was to figure out why the previous attempt to tunnel under the bayou did not work, before another effort is made. He used standard soil and rock borings along the alignment. Then he did a bathometric survey of the bayou, But as Garland found out in a subsequent investigation, that might have been a positive result, because the drill was headed straight into the abutment of the Osprey Avenue bridge. "We need to be 15 feet under the bridge to miss the abutment," he said. Residents might have been confused about whether work was getting under way early this week on the Lift Station 87 project. Instead, City of Sarasota employees were dealing with a broken water main near the intersection of U.S. 41 and U.S. 301 in downtown Sarasota — close to the site of the lift station project. Photo by Norman Schimmel