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Vineyard Drive pump station gets a test

The village of Fredonia has been working on testing the Vineyard Drive pump station in the last month.

Until recently, there were two issues with the Vineyard Drive pump station that have kept it from going online. One was a control panel that the village that has been installed, the other was National Fuel’s installation of a meter, which they are still waiting on.

“We made a couple of attempts to do that, but National Fuel requires that someone be present,” Trustee EvaDawn Bashaw said at a Fredonia Village Board meeting earlier this month. “I understand that we tried to set that up two or three times and we were unable to have somebody there. I know that National Fuel will call ahead 20 to 30 minutes, but I guess we didn’t give a number where someone will answer the phone. I’m hoping that we can get this taken care of.”

Public Works Director Tony Gugino replied there were at least two attempts to get the meter installed. “We had guys there including myself on two different occasions on the appointed dates and they never showed up,” Gugino stated. “I haven’t got the time to send people down there for eight hours a day when we’re doing five water breaks in the last 10 days and a multitude of problems at the water plant. National Fuel dropped the ball.”

According to Gugino the village got the control panel wired earlier this month and now they want to test it with the city of Dunkirk because they control the contract of what that station does so as not to tax their Main Street booster station.

“We have not dropped the ball, we’ve had guys there every day including myself,” Gugino went on. “They have not showed up and we are now supposed to try and test the system with a new control panel, with the engineers, the contractors and the subcontractors … in the middle of this frigid storm.”

Gugino’s biggest concern is that whatever settings they place on at the station, the city is comfortable with it as well.

“We have to make sure the city of Dunkirk is comfortable with the settings and when we turn that pump station on when we need water from Dunkirk that we don’t impact their Main Street booster station,” Gugino added. “The first time we tried this seven or eight weeks ago it really had negative effects on the Dunkirk system, we almost blew a lot of lines in Dunkirk.”

Gugino assured the board that the meter from National Fuel has no impact on the test and is basically for a backup generator at the site.

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