The Coosa Valley Water Supply District surface water treatment facility is in full operation, pumping treated surface water throughout the county.
Odenville, Springville, Pell City and St. Clair County Commission will pay $34,460.56 per month for water pumped from the surface water treatment facility in Ragland. Each entity is required to buy 750,000 gallons of water per day, whether or not the water is used.
Board attorney John Rea said each entity will pay about $1.52 per 1,000 gallons of water for the upcoming year.
The total monthly payments from all board entities total about $1.65 million for the year. Another $1.3 million will come from Environmental Protection Agency, Economic Development Authority and St. Clair County Commission grants, which help drive the cost of the water down for users and helps subsidize the plant operations and debt.
Board attorney Bill Trussell said entities should see their first bill of the year at the beginning of February for water used in January.
ClearWater Solutions is responsible for the billing. ClearWater was hired by the CVWSD to handle the day-to-day operations of the $32 million plant.
CVWSD began pumping water from the surface water treatment facility in November.
“Everything at the plant is going well,” said Chris Strickland, who is employed by ClearWater Solutions as project manager for the new water treatment facility.
Rick Ailiff, president of ClearWater Solutions, commended the CVWSD board for moving forward with the construction of the state-of-the-art plant.
“The plant is producing some of the best water I’ve ever seen,” he said.
While things appear well at the plant, there are problems with the delivery of water in at least two cities.
Some Pell City and Springville customers have experienced discolored water.
“It’s in our oldest part of the system,” said Earl Peoples, director of Springville Public Works Department.
City officials in Pell City and Springville blame the discolored water on reverse flows in old cast iron pipes.
Peoples said Springville’s problem covers a section about four blocks across and five blocks long, mixed with residential and business customers.
He said workers continue to flush the system to help correct the problem.
“For the most part, it’s getting better every day,” Peoples said. “Eventually it will go away.”
Councilman Greg Gossett, who serves on the CVWSD board, said the discolored water problem remains in the Oak Ridge and Mill Village areas.
Pell City is also flushing the system to help alleviate the problem.
Gossett said so far the city has provided customers who have discolored water with four pallets of bottled water, and one pallet of one-gallon water containers.
He said one business in the city’s industrial park has reported discolored water.
Jimmy Bailey, manager of the Odenville Utility Board, said there are no complaints of discolored water from Odenville Utility Board customers. He said most of the water lines in Odenville are PVC, plastic pipes, not cast iron or unlined ductile iron pipes, which can produce discolored water when there is a reverse flow.
Contact David Atchison at datchison@dailyhome.com.
