Built in 1974, the Wachter Avenue Master Lift Station conveyed approximately 40% of the city’s wastewater flow by 2012. The lift station no longer had adequate capacity to convey peak flows anymore and both the lift station and forcemain had age-related condition issues. In January of 2012 a major failure occurred in the ductile iron forcemain resulting in the diversion of wastewater to a storm drainage ditch and a request for limited water usage by residents of South Bismarck.

In April of 2012, Apex Engineering Group was retained by the city to conduct a thorough assessment of the long-term viability of this critical lift station and forcemain. After studying
several alternatives, Apex designed a new parallel forcemain to provide redundancy and lift
station improvements to increase its capacity and reliability. The new forcemain was put into service in October of 2013 and the lift station upgrades were constructed in 2017.

The Wachter Avenue Master Lift Station and Forcemain project included a complete lift station rehabilitation and 4,500 LF of fused 24” PVC pipe. The projects also included the following elements:

• Intermittent bypassing of wastewater flows
• Four (4) 280 hp dry-pit submersible pumps
• Odor control
• Live connections to the existing forcemain network
• High groundwater and poor soil conditions
• 1,800 LF of horizontal directional drilling