Case Story - Flooding and Stormwater

East Grand Forks, Minnesota, a city located on the banks of the Red River, is prone to flooding. Major floods occurred in 1997, 2019 and 2020. To mitigate the potential for flooding the downtown and residential areas the city converted a 24-acre wastewater pond into a combined sewer and stormwater equalization basin that could hold 36 million gallons.

On September 21^st. 2019 the city received 5.5" of rain in one hour. To complicate matters, On October 5^th. East Grand Forks received 7.5" of snow which promptly began melting. The rainfall and snow mixture flooded the river, the adjacent lowlands and filled the basin, threatening to breach the berm of the basin…          
                                       
The city began pumping, utilizing their existing pumping equipment, but soon realized that they were losing ground. Dillon Nelson, the cities chief storm and wastewater operator, turned to Minnesota Pump Works, a BBA Pumps distributor that was able to provide, from their stock, an 8" diesel driven pump BA180E D315. The sound attenuated trailer mounted bypass pump was put into use immediately and ran around the clock. Within 30 days of the events, East Grand Forks was able to pump the excess 100 million gallons of combined stormwater and wastewater saving the city from flooding.

The BBA pump was once again put into use during the floods of 2020 where it ran 24/7 flawlessly for 12 days pumping an excess of 34 million gallons.

It’s amazing what can be accomplished when customers team up with great distributors and quality manufactures.