DALLAS - Local dignitaries cut the ribbon Tuesday for the new Pavaho Pump Station located at the foot of the West Levee on Canada Drive in Dallas.

Construction of the new three-pump station, adjacent to an existing facility, greatly expands the city’s ability to respond to storms that create neighborhood flooding in a three-square-mile drainage basin in West Dallas.

The station became operational in August and has already has successfully responded to recent storms.

The U.S. Corps of Engineers Fort Worth District’s role in the city-led project was to ensure that the new pump station, through the Section 408 process, maintained the integrity of the federal Dallas Floodway System. The 22-mile-long East and West Levees are the major barriers to flooding in the system, which carries the Trinity River through the heart of the city.

Vonciel Jones Hill, the District 5 Dallas City Council member who chairs the Trinity River Corridor Committee, addressed the open house audience Tuesday. Her committee oversees all city projects in the Dallas Floodway System, including the expansion of a number of pump stations now under way.

Also speaking was Monica R. Alonzo, the Dallas City Council member from District 6, which benefits from the increased pumping capacity at Pavaho. The pump station protects an additional 1,000 homes from flooding by pumping storm water from the land side of the West Levee into the Trinity River. The three new pumps together can pump 375,000 gallons of storm water per minute – the equivalent of filling an Olympic-size swimming pool in less than two minutes.

Jourke Oosterkamp, general manager of Flowserve in Hengelo, The Netherlands, presented Alonzo with a plaque during the event. The pumps were designed and manufactured in Hengelo. They are the first concrete volute pumps constructed for storm water use in the United States.

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