Hebron lift station, park have power at last

• Reprints

Updated: February 22, 2012 8:03AM

HEBRON — The town’s northern residents won’t have to worry about flooding again with the coming storms and thaws. The new storm sewer lift station that the city completed near Oak Court in September is now hooked up and ready to function properly.

The lack of power to the station, which serves the Park Place subdivision, and the lack of power to Alyea Park on Washington Street were both sources of complaints from Town Council members at their Tuesday meeting.

“We have homes that’ll be in jeopardy if there’s a storm,” President Don Ensign said about the lift station, which gets stormwater over an incline.

Clerk-Treasurer Terry Waywood also was concerned about the safety of Alyea, which lost power in an August storm. “We’re going to get vandalism in the park. It always happens when there’s no light,” Waywood said.

The council said they’d been on NIPSCO’s waiting list for months, and Public Works Director Jim Shelhart and Waywood said they’d been calling NIPSCO’s Valparaiso office almost daily.

According to NIPSCO, the station had been online before the Jan. 17 meeting, though. spokesman Nick Meyer said that much had to do with inaccurate specifications the town provided in spring before construction began. He said NIPSCO installed transformers Dec. 20 and had finished connecting the lift station Jan. 5, after it had the right specifications.

Meyer contacted the town Wednesday but only communicated directly with Waywood Thursday. Waywood wasn’t available for comment Thursday evening.

Shelhart said, “It doesn’t matter when it was hooked up. It’s hooked up now. That’s all I care.”

Meyer said NIPSCO had no record of a request to reinstate power to Alyea Park, but he couldn’t say why.

The power company will work to improve communications with the town, “something we’re committed to improving with all the communities we serve,” Meyer said.