The Deaver Road Tank and Booster Station project, in Columbus, Indiana, was awarded a 2026 American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) of Indiana Engineering Excellence State Finalist Award.
Since the mid-2000s, Columbus City Utilities (CCU) has operated its plants with high service pumps in a continuous run mode, maintaining a system hydraulic grade that rendered older water tanks unusable as new developments were built to a higher grade to keep up with growth. In addition, these strained pumps, not designed for continuous use, caused distribution system surges due to a lack of pressure relief.
To address these concerns, CCU partnered with Strand Associates, Inc.® to complete an innovative water distribution system project that impacted an entire city, around 50,000 users.
Fundamental changes during design included:
- Increasing the elevated storage tank size from 1 million to 2 million gallons.
- Replacing the two older, underground booster pumping stations of 1,500 to 2,000 gallons per minute (gpm) with a new, above-ground 6,000-gpm booster pumping station.
- Swapping the pressure zones so that the built tank operated in the low-pressure zone rather than the high-pressure zone.
- Adding a 250-kilowatt generator that enables an uninterrupted water supply to the western zone during power outages.
This project changed the entire operation of the CCU water system, addressing unique issues to improve overall water pressure and system performance.
