ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Sixty feet down a stairwell — with no elevator yet and the permanent stairs still under construction — two enormous pumps hummed so quietly that Paul Carbary had trouble telling which ones were running.
“They’re about the quietest pumps I’ve ever seen,” said Carbary, AlexRenew’s senior operations and maintenance adviser, who first set foot on the treatment plant site in 2002. Each of the four wet-weather pumps can move 45 million gallons a day at full speed.
The pumps are among the most striking pieces of RiverRenew, the program that AlexRenew will bring online July 1 to meet a state-mandated deadline — and the reason the utility invited The Alexandria Brief underground this week for a look at what crews have built…