SOUTH GARDINER — The question Doug Clark often gets is why he needs two or three of the same thing.

“We can’t ever shut down,” the director of Gardiner’s Wastewater Treatment Plant, said. “We can’t. Ever.”

On Wednesday, Clark was overseeing the installation of a screw pump at the plant in South Gardiner to replace one of two the plant uses alternately to move water and whatever is flushed in Gardiner into the plant for treatment.

It’s no small task.

The screw pump, 48 inches in diameter and 60 feet long, is fabricated from steel and weighs about 16 tons. It was loaded on a truck in Thomasville, Georgia, earlier in the week and it arrived in Gardiner midday Wednesday. Two cranes are required to remove the retired pump and maneuver the new one into place.

“They’ll work until dark,” Clark said, indicating the workers who delivered the pump and were installing it. “They’ll come back on Friday if they need to.”

Advertisement

In the meantime, the pump installed in 2005 will carry the load.

The pump is basically an Archimedes screw. The mechanical device, believed to be invented by Archimedes, a Greek scientist who lived in the third century B.C., is a tube that encloses a spiral. When the mechanism is revolved — in the case of the Gardiner Wastewater Treatment Plant, a 100 horsepower motor powers it — the screw moves its contents uphill.

The pumps have an estimated life of about 15 years. Clark had overseen the installation of the pump being changed out this week before he left the city’s employ in 1999. His successor installed the other one in 2005, so it has a few years left before it will need replacing.

It’s easy to tell when they are wearing out, Clark said. The steel rusts and the tube springs leak and water sprays everywhere.

“We patched it two years ago, and the order for this one went in six months ago,” he said.

The mechanism costs $217,000 and the funds to pay for it are coming from the wastewater department’s capital reserve account, Gardiner Finance Director Denise Brown said. That’s money that’s been set aside for purchases like these. Essentially the department is paying cash, so no one’s sewer bill will increase as a result and it won’t affect the city’s tax rate.

Jessica Lowell — 621-5632

jlowell@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @JLowellKJ


Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.