Council authorizes $16,192.55 purchase of filter media after water-plant issue

Junction City Council on Aug. 27 authorized the purchase of anthracite and greensand filter media to restore filters at the municipal water treatment plant after staff found the filters missing most of their media.

Public works staff said the problem emerged in June when the plant experienced operational issues; an investigation found that some valves were closed and filters had not backwashed properly for an estimated three weeks. "Some valves were closed off. They should have been closed off, so it stopped the filters from backwashing for, we estimate, 3 weeks before it was caught," staff said. Because the top layers of filter media (18 inches of anthracite atop 18 inches of greensand) were depleted in most filters, staff recommended refilling the layers to restore full filtration.

Staff presented a vendor bid and asked the council to approve a purchase from Lowcrest (transcript variants include LowPress/Lopez/Lowcrest) for a total price of $16,192.55, noting that shipping costs can be substantial and that the estimate uses a worst-case shipping assumption. Councilors asked how the problem happened, how frequently staff will monitor media depth going forward, and whether there were alternatives to the recommended vendor. Staff said they will adopt a written policy to measure media depth and trigger refill when a threshold (estimated at roughly one inch of loss in some remarks) is reached.

A motion to approve the purchase and authorize the public works director to sign was made and seconded; council recorded the vote as unanimous. Staff said the plant remains online but filters are temporarily out of service while media is refilled and reconfigured.