Wastewater operators for the city of Cashmere had a messy and dangerous problem. The lift station serving a subdivision of the Washington town was routinely clogging up with stringy materials and elastics. The pair of pumps could not handle the ragging and the city was forced to install a trash basket a 55-gallon drum cut in half and hung in the waste stream to keep the solids out of the pumps.
Operators had to regularly clear the trash basket, a dangerous and disgusting job. “The process of cleaning the basket was one of the most disgusting jobs you could run across,” says Andrew Klempel, account manager for Whitney Equipment Company. The city was also concerned with worker safety accessing the basket in the vault was awkward due to configuration, and there was a risk from removing potentially dangerous material, such as needles, from the basket.
