Water Projects on Hold Until Funding Is Secured
By ANTHONY GAYNOR, Staff WriterPlans for Elkins' $26 million water treatment plant and distribution system upgrade are on hold until funding is secured. The money will most likely come from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Utility Service.
"We are waiting on Washington to approve everything," Chapman Technical Group Engineer Jeff Ekstrom told the Elkins City Council Water Committee on Tuesday. "We are just sitting and waiting."
At a prior meeting, Ekstrom told committee members that the environmental reports had been reformatted. Those reports have since been approved. Ekstrom said Chapman has revised the engineering plan twice and submitted pictures of the currexnt treatment plant on Baron Avenue.
"No negatives have come out in our conversations with them," Ekstrom said.
The next step for the project is designing the plant site on Reservoir Hill. Ekstrom handed out a summary sheet for the four different membrane pilot plants the city has tested.
"All of them performed well," Ekstrom said. "Everything is basically the same through the pilots. I recommend the next step is to request prices from the companies."
The four companies being considered are the PALL Corp., Seimens Water Technologies, GE/Zenon Environmental Systems and Layne Christensen. Ekstrom said the cost for membrane replacements needs to be considered, and the bids he will request will be good for a year and half.
"Once the bids come back, we can start the review process and decide on a membrane. Then we can design the plant," Ekstrom said.
Chapman Technical is planning to take City Council members and Water Department employees on trips to see the plants in action. Trips are scheduled for Ripley, Pennsylvania and Iowa.
Ekstrom also informed the committee that the McQuain Street tank will be torn down and a salvage company will pay the city to do the work.
Engineers also provided the committee with a tentative layout design for the plant and water storage tanks on Reservoir Hill.
"The tank sizes on Reservoir Hill are set," Ekstrom said. "We have yet to determine the building size because we do not yet know which membrane will be used."
The property is owned by the city and no additional property will have to be purchased.
"The Reservoir Hill site may not be in the city limits," said City Councilman Tom Hensil, 2nd Ward. "We may have to annex the property."
Kennon Chambers of Chapman Technical Group is in charge of the design work for the water distribution system. He said they are going to have to look at all the lines and possibly eliminate some of the replacements to compensate for the rising costs of construction materials.
In other Water Committee news, Water Distribution Supervisor Rick Smith said there are random areas of town that have had cloudy water.
"There is no reason for it," Smith said on Tuesday. "We had one house with cloudy water yesterday and the houses around it were fine."
Smith said his department will begin to flush hydrants to try to solve the problem. Flushing the entire system could take about a month to a month and a half, according to Smith.
"We can't wait. We have to do this," Smith said. "There is going to be a lot of dirty water for awhile."
An exact start date has not been determined, but he plans to do the work on Tuesdays through Fridays.
