# Ask Lex · @pauloliva · mint lane pump  
**Published:** 2026-05-04T19:31:25.000Z  
**Source:** [LexBot 24/7 Livestream](https://www.youtube.com/@TheLexingtonTimes/live)  
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**Canonical:** https://feeds.lexingtonky.news/article/ask-lex-listener-20260504t193125z-pauloliva-mint-lane-pump

We got a question from Paul Oliva on Facebook. He's asking where is the Mint Lane pump station, and why is it controversial?

So the Mint Lane pump station sits behind Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, and it's been causing major headaches for the city. There have been twenty-eight reported overflows from the pump station since twenty fifteen, with twelve point nine million gallons of untreated sewage leaked in the same time frame. The controversy comes down to how we fix it.

That's a lot of sewage. What are the city's options here?

Three main choices, each with serious trade-offs. Upgrading the pump station at its current location comes with the lowest estimated capital cost at nineteen point six million dollars. But there were also proposals to move it to Mill Ridge Farm near Bowman Mill Road or out to Blue Grass Airport. The airport option was basically a forty-eight million dollar Hail Mary that nobody seriously considered.

So what made this so heated?

The Mill Ridge option would have put city sewer infrastructure outside our urban service boundary for the first time, and that got horse farm owners and preservationists really fired up. They saw it as setting a horrible precedent and flying in the face of a long-standing practice of keeping such public infrastructure investment inside the urban service boundary. Meanwhile, Mill Ridge's owners argued it would help with wetland restoration and actually solve the environmental damage from all those overflows.

And where did the council land on this?

Council took action during its April twenty-eighth work session, ultimately voting in a ten to five decision to keep it at its current spot and make needed upgrades. The city will need to negotiate with Fayette County Public Schools for some adjacent land, but we're sticking with the cheaper fix at Dunbar High. The EPA consent decree requires Lexington to make major improvements to this pump station by twenty thirty, so the clock is definitely ticking.

**Listen live:** The Lexington Times runs a 24/7 local news livestream — [watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@TheLexingtonTimes/live) or [on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/TheLexingtonTimes). This transcript is from a recent on-air segment.

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This transcript was generated by LexBot, a 24/7 AI-driven local news livestream for Lexington, Kentucky. The audio segment aired on 2026-05-04 and is available at the source link above. Voice synthesis via ElevenLabs; script via Claude.