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St. Clairsville’s Water System a Struggle

St. Clairsville Safety and Service Director Jim Zucal looks over the deteriorating infrastructure at the water plant. The city is facing the decision of whether to privatize or attempt to meet Ohio Environmental Protection Agency mandates themselves.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Regardless of whether city leaders vote to sell St. Clairsville’s water and wastewater treatment and distribution systems on Monday, many repairs and upgrades to the network will have to be made after the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency issued a series of mandates, some of which will be quite costly.

The city’s treated water currently meets health, safety and environmental requirements, but the age of the facilities and decades of postponed maintenance have led to difficulties in maintaining the systems. Extra steps must be taken to remove iron, manganese and harmful algal blooms from the water as it is pumped from the reservoir into the plant for treatment.

According to Safety and Service Director Jim Zucal, the infrastructure is crumbling and the tanks are leaking into the plant. The city also updated its treatment system at the wastewater plant, where sulfur dioxide and chlorine leaks led to evacuations of the surrounding neighborhood. The system was updated to use less dangerous dry chlorine tablets, rather than chlorine gas to treat the wastewater. The project costs about $20,000.

During the past three years, the city has spent $300,000 on repairs. In 2016, the feed from the plant to the reservoir was cleaned for the first time since 1928. The pump that pushes water from plant to the distribution system has been rebuilt. Seals were also replaced to prevent oil from a pump from leaking into the treated water. Three new rate of control valves were also installed.

The city briefly purchased water from Belmont County in late summer, when drought conditions caused the reservoir level to drop by 50 percent. The city also recently hired a pair of Class 3 water operators, as mandated by the OEPA due to the use of surface water rather than well water.

But according to city officials, the demand for upgrades and improvements continues.

The OEPA wants “dramatic action, immediately. They’re not waiting,” Safety and Service Director Jim Zucal said. “They want a plan, and they want it done immediately.”

He said there are problems at every stage of the water treatment process.

“It’s from source to tap,” Zucal said.

For the source, he pointed to the city’s two reservoirs, saying both are inadequate.

“Although the main reservoir carries a lot of water … our source-water is still in poor condition,” he said, adding that the main reservoir must be dredged. “The idea is we would get a diver in there, because the bottom intake, the opening, we can’t even use. The suspicion is there’s 10 to 15 feet of sediment, millions of cubic yards of material.”

Meanwhile, the city is complying with Ohio EPA mandates by conducting a study of the backup Provident reservoir. Zucal said both reservoirs are roughly the same age as the water plant, developed in the 1930s.

“We’ve cleaned out the cast iron line that feeds the plant, we’ve put just in the last year alone about $400,000 into the plant. It’s still a 1929 plant. It’s 90 years old and still needs a lot of work,” Zucal said. “On top of that, we have rising chemical costs, rising labor costs.”

According to Zucal, new pumps are needed at the plant, along with a new clear well, which could cost $1 million.

While the carbon lagoons have been vacuumed out and sludge has been removed from the settling basin since the OEPA mandates came down, other repairs must be done to the surge pump, gaps must be repaired in the basement wall, the carbon feed must be changed from plastic to metal, and the chlorine feed line must also be repaired.

“We’ve got to fix many of the basement issues,” Zucal said. “We’ve got pump issues in the basement, drainage issues … water issues. … We need to upgrade all the chemical feed. … There’s millions of dollars can still be spent on that site.”

He said the water quality is safe, but risks remain.

Opponents of privatization have expressed doubts that Aqua Ohio would build a new water plant and suggest that buying water from Belmont County is an option. Zucal said Aqua Ohio has not ruled out construction of a new plant at a cost of $12 million to $15 million. He added that the county has not provided a timetable for its water service upgrades, which would be necessary for it to supply the city year-round.

Zucal said the city also must prepare to provide water to the new St. Clair Commons development.

“We need $20 million to $25 million,” he said. “Then it goes out into an inferior distribution system. There’s over 10 miles of 4-inch pipe in the ground that needs replaced.”

Zucal said the waterlines are inferior in terms of fire suppression. He said the estimate to replace lines is close to $7 million.

Zucal also pointed to leaks in the distribution system. He said in September, the city lost 57 percent of the water it treated through leaks.

Mayor Terry Pugh said he expects the OEPA to issue a timetable for the city to meet its mandates in the near future.

“We have to start working on their timetable, and they’re adamant about this,” he said.

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