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Staton officials warn Detroit Dam drawdown could cripple local water treatment; city pursues mitigation and federal help
Summary
Staton city staff warned the City Council on July 21 that a planned drawdown of Detroit Lake could overwhelm the city’s slow-sand water treatment plant and that the city is pursuing technical, legal and federal measures to avoid service disruption.
Staton city staff warned the City Council on July 21 that a planned drawdown of Detroit Lake could produce highly turbid inflows that the city’s slow-sand filtration plant is not built to treat. Interim Public Works Director Barry Buchanan said the city’s treatment filters lack pretreatment and recycling capability and that the consequences of running the system with heavily silted water could be severe.
“Given the information that we have heard this morning, catastrophic is truly a kind word,” Buchanan said, describing the operational risk to the plant. He told council the city must “do something” and that options include pretreatment systems, additional wells, expanded aquifer-storage-and-recovery (ASR) or other costly mitigation.
City Manager Julia Knight said Staton is pursuing…
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