DOVER, Del. --- Corrosion of electronic parts inside a pump station that handles millions of gallons of untreated sewage each month may have caused the system to fail last month.
Dover Public Works Director Sharon Duca on Friday said some electronic components within the system were found to be corroded and would have had an impact in the station's failure on Feb. 19.
The six pumps inside the station completely failed and the shutdown prompted a pair of bypass pumps to be used at the station to contain and pump sewage through the system.
The corrosion, Duca said, appeared to happen more quickly than it normally would have occurred, likely because of additional wastewater flow from Kent County, which has been using the pump station to bypass a section of asewer force main beneath U.S. Route 13.
Without the re-directed county wastewater, Duca said the city was pumping about 28 million gallons of sewage on a monthly basis through Pump Station 7.
But the county's wastewater boosted that figure to more than 60 million gallons per month.
