How Lexington changed a 60-foot-tall water storage tank from an eyesore to an amenity

The Lower Cane Run wet weather storage tank is more than 60 feet tall and can hold more than 11 million gallons of water during storms.

It also now serves as a rest area, complete with bathrooms, a water bottle-filling station and benches, for travelers on the popular Legacy Trail, not far from Coldstream Park on Newtown Pike.

The tank’s location was less than ideal, said Charlie Martin, the city’s acting Commissioner of Environmental Quality and Public Works.

“We needed to build the tank, but we wanted it to be more than a plain piece of infrastructure due its prominent location along the Legacy Trail,” Martin said. “We saw this project as an opportunity to provide conveniences that the public wanted.”

The nearly 12-mile Legacy Trail runs through mostly rural landscape, where there are few areas for runners or bikers to use the bathroom or get water.

At a news conference Tuesday to unveil the changes, Mayor Jim Gray said the city also included another project just upstream from the tank — a newly constructed wetlands and a bioswale that collects rainwater and treats it naturally before it enters the Lower Cane Run creek.

The Lower Cane Run storage tank is part of a more than $590 million sewer and stormwater upgrade effort required by a consent decree agreement between the city and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The storage tank holds diverted stormwater and diluted sewage when the city’s sanitary sewage pipes and pump stations run at full capacity, such as during major storms. The tank held 5 million gallons of additional water during the storms earlier this month.

The tank then slowly releases the water back into the system. The tanks prevent sanitary sewer overflows, which led to the EPA consent decree.

This story was originally published September 18, 2018 at 3:07 PM.