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Eastern Avenue Pumping Station (where the museum is located) --
Completed in 1912, the majestic Eastern Avenue pumping station was the architectural crown jewel in Baltimore City's ambitious plan to provide its citizens with a service largely taken for granted today, a sanitary sewage system. Earlier, Baltimoreans disposed of their wastewater in alleys, backyard cesspool pits, or privately built tunnels that emptied into the nearest body of water. These crude methods of disposal created unhealthy conditions that rapidly spread disease. While larger cities in the United States began constructing sewage systems as early as the 1850's, Baltimore lagged behind, hobbled by competing interests and political infighting. However, after the devastating downtown fire of 1904, city planners were finally spurred into action by the spirit of modernization and rebuilding that swept through Baltimore.
When finally completed, the new sewage system was a great source of civil pride in Baltimore; an engineering marvel of the latest technology, built to last. Although the original Corliss steam engines have been replaced with electric pumps, this building is still pumping nearly a third of Baltimore City's wastewater to the Back River Plant for cleaning. The Eastern Avenue Pumping Station has provided nearly a century of service to the citizens of Baltimore, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
When Gravity Isn't Enough...
The role of pumping stations.
A treatment plant cannot serve some locations by gravity. For these areas, pumping stations are used to push the wastewater to the outfalls. These pumps are housed in buildings called pumping stations. There are a total of 125 wastewater pumping stations in the Baltimore wastewater network.
Eastern Avenue Pumping Station, where you are now standing, is a prime example of a wastewater pumping station. Wastewater from the low level sewershed flows into a chamber at the pumping station. When the water in the chamber rises, a switch turns on the pumps. The pumps then force the wastewater through pipes to the outfall. From there, the wastewater flows by gravity to the backriver wastewater treatment plant for processing.
Where does Baltimore gets its water?
Baltimore uses surface water from rainfall and snowmelt as the source of its water. The water is collected and stored in three large reservoirs: (1) Liberty Reservoir, located at the north branch of the Patapsco River, supplies raw water to the Ashburton Treatment Plant, (2) Loch Raven Reservoir, located in Baltimore County on the Gunpowder Falls, supplies water to Montebello Filtration Plants I and II, and (3) Prettyboy Reservoir is located near the Maryland/Pennsylvania state line, releasing water to Gunpowder Falls which drains into Loch Raven Reservoir. The city also maintains a supplemental raw water intake located along the Susquehanna River, which would flow, when needed, to the Montebello Plants.
As water travels over the surface of the land, it dissolves and absorbs naturally occurring minerals, and picks up substances resulting from the presence of animals or human activity. Contaminants may include: viruses and bacteria, salts and metals, organic chemicals, radioactive contaminants.
In Baltimore, as water arrives from our reservoirs, teams of chemists and technicians in our filtration plants work closely with the operations staff to test water samples collected from widely separated points in the purification system using standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). During every twenty-four hour period, the staff continually monitors and maintains and quality of our water from the time it enters each plant to the time it reaches you. |