This is not your parents’ sewage pump station.

When built, Seattle’s newest piece of public infrastructure will look like a tower of lights, according to its designers. The 65-foot-tall cylindrical pump station, scheduled for construction next year on the Ballard waterfront, will be wrapped in an 80-foot-tall stainless steel lattice with gleaming LED effects.

Part of a $570 million megaproject that also includes a 2.7-mile-long storage tunnel stretching between Ballard and Wallingford, the $100 million station will pump sewage and polluted storm water out of that tunnel, then send the messy mixture on its way to the West Point Treatment Plant.

Seattle Public Utilities and the King County Wastewater Treatment Division are digging the tunnel along the north shore of the Lake Washington Ship Canal to collect sewage and storm water, preventing the mix from flowing into the ship canal, Lake Union and Salmon Bay during heavy rains.

In older Seattle neighborhoods, sewage from bathrooms and storm water from street gutters drains through the same pipes. Today, when downpours overwhelm those pipes, some of the slop gets spilled into the ship canal, causing environmental harm. The city and county are under pressure to reduce that problem, per consent decrees with federal and state authorities.

A 900,000-pound drill (dubbed “MudHoney,” after the Seattle grunge band, in an online vote) is boring the nearly 19-foot-wide storage tunnel, which is supposed to be operational by 2026, hold more than 29 million gallons of liquid and keep 75 million gallons out of the ship canal each year.

To dress up the concrete pump station (which includes the only major aboveground component of the water-quality project), SPU hired Johnston Architects, which released details Thursday. The designers were “inspired by local elements” in Ballard, like ship scaffolding in the neighborhood’s shipyards and crab pots, said Keith Ward, SPU’s project executive.

“We wanted to celebrate that maritime industry,” Ward said.

The shifting LED effects on the lattice wrap could be programmed in sync with the weather forecast and are supposed to resemble “fractured moonlight on the surface of the water,” while possibly suggesting bioluminescence, as well, according to the designers. The lights also could be programmed to behave differently when the tunnel is filling or the station is pumping, “but we’re still working” on that, Ward said.

The station’s initial design was boxy and bland, he said, so “we pivoted to a more circular shape,” mimicking the contours of the 80-foot-wide, 95-foot-deep drop shaft that will be situated below the structure.

The drop shaft is where the pumps will be, while electrical equipment and cranes (to periodically hoist the pumps) will be housed above ground. The pump station’s design costs totaled $7.2 million and the project has been reviewed multiple times by the Seattle Design Commission, Ward said.

As part of the design, “There was a whole light analysis” to make sure the LED effects wouldn’t flash into homes in the neighborhood, Ward added. The pump station will include an odor control filter, because the tunnel will sometimes store smelly liquid (approximately 10% sewage and 90% storm water) for several days, he said.

The pump station will be built at 24th Avenue Northwest and Northwest 54th Street, across the road from the Pacific Fishermen Shipyard, at an SPU site that includes a recently renovated public pier. There also will be a maintenance yard and a parking lot, and the site’s landscaping will include a “tree nursery” to grow trees for planting around the city, Ward said.

Along with the lighted lattice, SPU plans to install a 24-foot-tall cedar and bronze sculpture at the site by Jeffrey Veregge, an artist from the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe. The piece will depict a moon-alluring Octopus Woman blessing the water , according to Johnston Architects, and help meet the city’s 1% for Art requirement for capital projects, administered by the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, Ward said.

This coverage is partially underwritten by Microsoft Philanthropies. The Seattle Times maintains editorial control over this and all its coverage.

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