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| Lowville Trustees Approve Leasing Portable Water Treatment Plant to Supplement Current System in the Short Term 08/26/17 11:45am |
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with the Village Board of Trustees and the Village Municipal Board to deal with the Village's water system crisis, which has worsened through the week. By Friday morning, levels in the 20-foot reserve tower had dropped to around the 7 1/2 foot mark, leaving just over a million gallons in reserve. A Critical Water Level Notice was issued on Thursday, when reserve level dropped below the 10-foot mark. Residents were ordered to conserve water, continuing a measure that has been in place since August 8th. At Friday's emergency meeting, the Village Board of Trustees unanimously approved leasing a portable water treatment plant, with the approval of the Municipal Board, at a cost of $30,000 - $40,000 per month. This is meant as a short-term solution while the Village performs a comprehensive water system study to determine what is available as a permanent solution. The portable system, which could be installed as early as next week, will supplement the current filtration system to filter the maximum daily amount of 1.5 million gallons that the plant is certified by the New York State Department of Health to produce. The current four-bed slow sand filtration system is able to filter about 1.3 million gallons a day when running at full capacity, but heavy rain this year has increased the amount of sediment coming into the system and clogging the filters faster. With the recent addition of a new string cheese line at the Kraft Heinz Plant in the village, daily usage system-wide has peaked at around 1.3 million gallons a day. With the filters not performing at full capacity, water has been steadily drawn from the reserve tower. By adding the portable system, which can be used as long as it is needed, the hope is the combined systems can easily filter the 1.5 million gallons per day the Village is permitted to filter. This would also allow the sand bed filters to be taken offline more frequently for cleaning. The portable plant would be winterized, allowing for use through the winter months. The portable system is capable of cleaning up to 1 million gallons of water per day. Trustees also considered trucking in water from neighboring districts, at a cost of $35,000 - $45,000 per week, with the portable plant deemed more cost effective. If the portable system is leased for a one-year period a cheaper rate would be available. Trustees also requested that an option for purchasing the portable plant be looked into. A joint meeting of the Village Board of Trustees and the Village Municipal Board that was scheduled for September 12th was cancelled, after the decision to lease the portable plant was made. The study the board approved GYMO engineers to perform on solutions for the system was postponed. The board approved GYMO to help with the addition of the portable system at a cost of up to $8,500. |