The San Bernardino Municipal Water Department (SBMWD) owns and operates the Meridian Lift Station, which is adjacent to many single-family residences, as well as the San Bernardino Flood Control District’s Randall Basin, near Randall Avenue and Meridian Avenue in the southwest portion of the City of San Bernardino. The lift station was constructed and placed into service in 1983. At 38 years old, it is in relatively poor condition and suffers from operational challenges.
The existing lift station consists of two self-priming pumps located in a small FRP enclosure, a below-grade wet well and associated electrical equipment. A sliding Quonset-hut style enclosure contains the pumps, electrical panels, and the control panel. The lift station has a limited storage capacity to provide adequate response time to address potential station operational issues and is not equipped with a backup power supply.
A 2019 Sewer Master Plan assessed the station’s condition and determined that most components had exceeded their useful service lives and recommended that the entire lift station should be replaced to improve facility reliability and reduce the risks of a Sanitary Sewer Overflow (SSO). The replacement lift station shall be capable of handling peak wet weather flows with built-in 100% redundant pumping capacity and shall be equipped with SCAQMD permitted emergency backup power.
LEE + RO’s scope of work includes preliminary design, final design, CEQA compliance, bid phase services, and construction support services to replace the existing station with a new modern pump station. The new lift station will consist of a new wet well equipped with a 2+1 submersible pump lineup, new electrical building to house the station’s switchgear, MCCs with variable frequency drives, PLC-based controls, and SCADA system, a 100kW emergency standby generator, and site improvements that will improve site security, increase capacity and reliability, increase operational flexibility by providing modern pump station controls, increase system efficiency and reduce energy consumption, and reduce operations and maintenance issues by providing a new lift station that meets SBMWD’s current operational design criteria.
