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Estrella/Laveen The southern growth area is made up of western portions of the Estrella and Laveen Villages in southwest Phoenix (see map below). In western Estrella, which can be roughly defined as south of Buckeye Road, west of 43rd Avenue, north of the Salt River, and east of 107th Avenue, most recent residential development has had to hook into a new network of sewers and lift stations that has been under construction since the late 1990s. The few existing sewers that existed prior to the construction of the Estrella master plan system were very large, designed to convey wastewater from other parts of Phoenix and neighboring communities to the 91st Avenue Sewage Treatment Plant, and generally were not deep enough to accommodate flows from developments in the Estrella area.
To address this deficiency, a separate wastewater network relying on lift stations to transport flows to the 91st Avenue Wastewater Treatment Plant was designed and partially constructed in Estrella. This separate network is currently serviced by two lift stations – Station 61, located near 107th Avenue and Broadway Road and with an ultimate capacity of 5.5 million gallons per day (MGD), and Station 62, located near 91st Avenue and Broadway Road, with a capacity of 5 MGD. Originally, The Water Services Department (WSD) had planned to construct a large 40 MGD lift station at approximately 107th Avenue and Roeser Road to replace the two smaller lift stations, but recently the WSD epartment has been investigating alternative options for serving this area. Wastewater flows have been declining steadily on a per capita and per unit basis, and the rate of development has changed with the recent downturn in the market, so WSD is now reevaluating which types of solutions would be most cost-effective and rational in the short and long-term. Since the turn of the decade when residential development began to pick up in the Estrella area, the department has carefully monitored wastewater flows in this network to ensure that there would be adequate capacity at the two lift stations. The recent sharp slowdown in residential development has reduced the immediate urgency of this concern, although the WSD continues to closely monitor wastewater flows in the area. Although estimating average household wastewater flows can be difficult because an unusual number of homes are unoccupied as a result of the volatile housing market, the Department is confident that average flows are lower than previously anticipated. The WSD is currently undertaking studies of water use and wastewater generation in the Estrella area and is exploring various options to provide necessary additional lift station capacity. At some point, however, enough growth will occur in Estrella to require additional lift station capacity. Last modified on 05/24/2011 12:34:30 |
