MARANA, Ariz. (KGUN) — As we all wait for the rain during this time of year, Marana’s Stormwater Maintenance Team has recently been completing several projects, preparing for what Mother Nature may bring.
The projects include upgrades to the Orange Grove Stormwater Facility Pump Station, which has been in use since 1990.
Stormwater Maintenance Supervisor Adrian Rojel explained that new safety features were added to the station, and all electronics were lifted. Several pieces of equipment were also added or upgraded, including a new generator system.
“If there’s an electric system or a power outage, this generator can actually maintain this pump station for three whole days by itself,” Rojel said.
Among the new features is a flow-tronic system.
“When we get flows of water of four, five feet, six feet – the water will kind of sit in there,” he explained. “When we start to get to the seven, eight feet of water, pumps will start kicking on and send water across Orange Grove – underneath our Town of Marana infrastructure.”
Rojel stays alerted as to what’s happening, even when not there.
“This machine will let me know if there’s any type of system failure with our pumps – from low water, to massive amounts of water coming in, to God forbid, one of our pumps is actually going out,” he said.
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He also plans to run a hydrology report soon. He explained that those results could be used to help further prevent flooding.
“Because there were some upgrades done to Orange Grove, you always want to run a hydrology report to see how much water is being flown through and that will actually let me know what types of pumps I need to install to make sure that we have no flooding in the Orange Grove pump station,” Rojel said.
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Madison Thomas joined KGUN 9 in July of 2023 as a multimedia journalist. She graduated from Arizona State University in May of 2023 with a degree in journalism and mass communication. She has lived in Arizona her entire life and grew up in Douglas. Madison is thrilled to share the stories from the community she grew up in. Share your story ideas and important issues with Madison by emailing madison.thomas@kgun9.com or by connecting on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.
