The Westlake Compressor Station in Louisiana is just one of three recent Romtec Utilities projects for the Gulf South Pipeline Company, also known as the Boardwalk Pipeline partners. The Gulf South Pipeline Company specializes in transporting natural gas through networks of pipelines across the Gulf Coast area, and was in need of stormwater pump stations for three of their metering sites: Stratton Ridge; the Dow Meter site; and the Westlake Compressor station.

These metering sites are completely outdoors and have millions of dollars of equipment at each location. With an outdoor site, it is important to keep the site secure and dry for both the equipment and the safety of personnel, and the Romtec Utilities pump station was designed with this in mind. The pump station gravity feeds from nearby underground basins to pump the water away from the site.

This Romtec Utilities stormwater system is composed of a precast concrete wet well with a 4’ inner diameter (ID) and extends 12’ in depth. Two Ebara 1 Horsepower Submersible pumps, and a Jockey 120v sump pump, work to discharge water from the wet well. Level sensing is achieved with 4 NOLTA MS1 floats that send level signals to an Alternator Relay control panel, which controls the pumping cycles.

In addition to the wet well, an above grade PVC skid was also supplied on this project. The above grade skid includes ball checks, ball valves, and an air release valve (ARV). ARV’s can be important to relieve the air pressure at a highpoint in the system, and can prevent air entrapment or an “air lock” which would impede the flow of water past that point.

Upstream from the pump station, Romtec Utilities also supplied a sedimentation box to collect sediment and potential solids in the water before it arrives in the wet well.

Similar to the other projects with Boardwalk Pipeline Partners, the site engineer for this location was TKE Engineering. Installation of the underground components on this project was provided by Patriot Construction and Bluewater Construction (General Contractor), who allowed Romtec Utilities to perform a successful start-up of the Westlake Compressor Station’s stormwater pump system.