Voorhees Township, NJ

Thanks to a $10 million 1,518 square foot pump station from the Virtua Hospital, businesses west of Route 73 will have improved sewer services and the township will be able to do away with several tricky pump stations that have been malfunctioning for the past few years.

The Township Committee approved an ordinance on first reading that will run a line from the newly constructed pump station at Dutchtown Road under Route 73 to the west side of the roadway. The new hospital paid for the pump station.

The township will pay for the $400,000 sewer line if approved on second reading.

Township Administrator Larry Spellman said Voorhees representatives looked at constructing a new pump station in the early 1990s but deemed it to be too expensive. No township tax dollars are being used to build this new station, he said, it's all funded by Virtua.

With this new pump station at Dutchtown Road, Spellman said the oft-malfunctioning Cooper Road pump station would be taken offline. The new pump station will easily be able to handle the waste previously processed by the Cooper Road station.

Two years ago the Cooper Road station malfunctioned during the Thanksgiving holiday, Spellman said, and trucks had to be brought in to manually pump the waste from the station to the Camden County sewer system.

"The amount of overtime for that was just unbelievable," Spellman said. "The pump station was way over capacity."

The new pump station will also allow the Sturbridge Lakes station to come offline in 5 to 10 years. A gravity line will be installed to service the Sturbridge Lakes neighborhood, Spellman said, which is less costly for the township and more energy efficient.

The station was recently refurbished so it would not make sense to take it offline presently, he said.

By ROBERT LINNEHAN