Long Beach News: Odor Busters™ program renewal and wastewater update
Published on January 27, 2025 at 10:33am CST
Long Beach News
By Mayor, Mike Pfeiffer
The City of Long Beach, in partnership with the City of Glenwood, TEAM LAB, PeopleService, and the MPCA, has launched an innovative program to reduce sewer gas odor in our cities’ sewer systems. We are welcoming all sewer accounts in Long Beach to add an Odor Busters™ pouch at least monthly. By eliminating sewer gas, we not only reduce odor, but we reduce corrosion on sewer equipment in both cities. Participating accounts receive a $5 discount on monthly sewer service.
Participation in the program requires annual renewal to keep your discount. To renew or begin the Odor Busters™ Program, visit https://www.longbeachmn.com/ and click the Odor Busters button in the red banner.
New Maintenance Access Pit
We installed a new access pit for maintenance on the N. Ridge Drive wastewater line, located behind the Minnewaska House. The access pit allows us to service the line and clean potential blockages without the need for an expensive and potentially dangerous sewer dig. Our wastewater system was installed in 1987 and is approaching 40 years old. We have a rigorous system of annual cleaning and maintenance for the system that reviews every grinder annually. We replace pumps when they fail and proactively about every 10 years when working pumps start to perform poorly.
Our lines are largely HDPE (High-Density Polyethylene) and have a proven useful life of 50-100 years. So, in 10 years we may start to see increased failures. As such, we are starting the process of seeking DEED funding for replacement to both ensure the existing service and prepare for potential expansion in the future as more accounts are added to our system.
New Wastewater Utility Shop
We are very excited to open our new Utility Shop adjacent to the Community Hub that is being built to replace our 70-year-old City Hall. The shop allows for year around maintenance of our grinder pumps and other work required to keep out wastewater system performing optimally. Often when a pump fails, our sewer engineer Michael Moen with PeopleService can troubleshoot, repair, and return the pump to service. These repairs can cost a few hundred dollars, or less, and allow the pump to return to service for many more years. Each new pump is over $3,000 today, so getting ten more years out of a repaired pump yields great saving to our Enterprise Sewer Fund.
Today, the process of testing repaired pumps was being conducted in the grass behind the old city hall and had to be put on hold once temperatures dropped below freezing because the test barrels that are filled with water. The new shop will allow for this maintenance process to continue even when temperatures fall below freezing, which seems to be happening all the time lately. 😊 Michael has also fabricated sewer tools while servicing our wastewater system. These specialized tools save us time and effort when maintaining the system and the shop will enable this fabrication to continue.
Finally, we will be folding multiple paid storage facilities into the shop as well. This will reduce monthly expenses required for the storage facilities in use today.
