Houston Intake Pump Station Project Completed
McCarthy Building Cos. Inc. has completed construction on the city of Houston’s Northeast Water Purification Plant’s (NEWPP) Intake Pump Station (IPS). The 30,000-sq-ft raw water Intake Pump Station building includes an access bridge constructed on pilings 1,000 ft from the shore within the middle of Lake Houston. The project will add 320 million gallons per day of drinking water for the city, substantially increasing the current 80 million gal/day of treated water capacity. This is one part of the larger $1.765-billion design-build NEWPP expansion project.
The expansion of NEWPP is currently the largest progressive design-build water treatment plant project underway in Texas and in the U.S. McCarthy’s Houston Waterworks team was awarded three separate contracts on the project – the early works Central Plant foundations package, the raw water Intake Pump Station, which began in early 2019, and the balance of the Central Plant, which will be complete in 2024. The NEWPP project’s first 80MGD phase will be operational in early 2023, and the overall 320MGD plant will be in full operation in early 2025.
McCarthy’s scope included driving 30 piles into water with a depth of 16 ft, requiring all equipment to be fully submersible. In addition to the pile driving component, McCarthy was tasked with cast-in-place concrete placement over water, precast concrete erection and a large bore mechanical process piping phase that involved installing 108-in.-dia pipe. McCarthy installed 193 steel pipe piles in total.
Underneath the main structure of the station, piles are 128 ft long and 30 in. dia, as Lake Houston has a clay bottom, and the large diameter was designed to achieve the necessary structural capacity. McCarthy self-performed each scope, as well as process equipment installation, concrete work, metal installation, and earthwork.
ENR Texas & Louisiana – Aug. 9, 2022