The Meadows lift station is not as close to capacity as had been previously feared, Winfield officials said.

Engineer John Phipps told the Winfield Sewer Board on Tuesday that some problems still need to be corrected with the station, but the station as a whole still has excess capacity for waste water treatment.

"Flow meters tend to be fickle machines," Phipps told the board.

Most areas served by the station registered a flow rate well below the capacity of the two new pumps powering the system's sewer flow, Phipps said.

The pumps have a total of 350 gallons per minute of pumping power.

"We're not in as bad a shape as we thought," Phipps said.

One of the 10-inch lines that feeds into the station registered 701 gallons per household per day -- more than twice the maximum average for a normal household, he said.

In other business, the board approved a motion instructing Town Attorney Bill Enslen to begin crafting a letter to Merrillville, laying out Winfield's position on a drainage problem off of 101st Avenue in a neighborhood that borders the two towns.

The road was closed after heavy flooding east of Colorado Street. Winfield board members said the cause of the problem needs to be found, but noted Winfield has agreed to handle drainage issues if its system can handle it.