King County completes Lincoln Park sewer line construction a month ahead of schedule

The warm weather forecast for West Seattle beachgoers includes improved water quality, a newly restored beach and several park area improvements as King County sewer utility crews wrap up a major sewer line repair project in Lincoln Park a month earlier than expected.

To mark the end of construction and provide community updates, county staff will host a neighborhood event in Lincoln Park at picnic shelter No. 3 on Saturday, June 3 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

"I can't say enough about how grateful we are to the community members for their patience during construction," said Wastewater Treatment Division Director Don Theiler. "We know it was an inconvenience, but people understood the critical nature of the work and their cooperation was valuable in helping us get the project completed."

In late April, King County completed the project that began in February to replace more than a mile of aging sewer line running through the park after it was damaged by heavy rains and high flows last winter, causing two short-term sewage leaks in the park and Puget Sound.

To protect public health and enable construction to get underway, crews quickly stopped the leaks and shut down the damaged line, rerouting wastewater through a temporary 6,000-foot, 18-inch-diameter surface pipeline along the surface of the beach so it could get to the West Point Treatment Plant.

Crews then began repairs by installing a new 24-inch-diameter plastic lining inside the broken pipe, and trenching in a new 6,250-foot-long, 24-inch-diameter pipe alongside the newly lined pipe to increase capacity and system reliability.

With the relining and new pipe installation projects completed, crews were able to remove the temporary pipe and pumping equipment and begin restoring the beach, which will soon reopen for public access just in time for warm spring weather. The new pipeline is now in operation, pushing wastewater from the Barton Street Pump Station north of the Fauntleroy ferry dock through a 6,250-foot pipeline to the county's Murray Avenue Pump Station at Lowman Beach Park and on to the West Point Treatment Plant in Seattle's Magnolia neighborhood.

As part of the project, King County will undertake a number of other improvements and restoration activities over the next month.

King County has been working with City of Seattle Parks and Recreation on plans to restore areas in the park that were impacted by the sewer line construction, including the south parking lot, which will be reopened in late May.

Some restoration has already been completed, including re-grading the beach and removing more than six dump truck loads of creosote-treated logs, which contain substances harmful to water quality and fish. Because the logs play a vital role in sand movement on the beach and protecting property from higher tides during storms, King County will replace them with more environmentally-friendly untreated logs.

Additional information about the project can be found on the Web at http://dnr.metrokc.gov/wtd/projects/westseattle/index.htm or by calling John Phillips, community relations planner, at 206-263-6543 or 711 TTY.

People enjoy clean water and a healthy environment because of King County's wastewater treatment program. The county's Wastewater Treatment Division protects public health and water quality by serving 17 cities, 17 local sewer utilities and more than 1.4 million residents in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties. Formerly called Metro, the regional clean-water agency now operated by King County has been preventing water pollution for more than 40 years.