Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Water Infrastructure topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Town officials warn aging reservoir and tank problems could force costly emergency measures
Summary
Town water administrator warned the board that the plant's blending tank and Reservoir No. 4 are deteriorating, outlined options to gravity-feed the plant to allow safer repairs, and gave preliminary cost estimates for diver work, fittings and a major valve replacement.
The Town of Lloyd’s water and sewer administrator told the board the town faces mounting risks from an aging blending tank and related reservoir infrastructure and urged moving forward with a gravity-feed project that would let the town take Reservoir No. 4 out of service for repairs.
Adam Lman, the town’s administrator for water and sewer, said the blending tank—a raw-water holding structure installed about 1984—has been ‘‘deteriorating over the last four or five years’’ and now shows new leaks after repeated temporary fixes. He said the town is evaluating options from targeted repair (lining and caps) to a full replacement, and that a new tank built from scratch would carry a multimillion-dollar price tag.
Lman outlined work needed to enable a gravity-feed test that would remove the reservoir from service and allow repairs: locating and capping the intake (including diver work), installing a 16‑inch cap and replacing a 16‑inch valve. He gave ballpark cost estimates for diver location and intake work (approximately $3,000 for the initial diver day), materials for a 16‑inch cap (about $800), valve fittings and hardware (roughly $4,000), and a 16‑inch valve replacement that could be ‘‘somewhere ballpark about $18,000.’’ He said lining and minor repairs could extend service life for decades, while full replacement of a tank could run ‘‘about $10 million.’’
Lman also described operational impacts and contingency steps if the tank failed: bottled water and tank trucks would be needed temporarily and the town might rent large temporary tanks (so-called frack tanks) as an emergency measure, but those require excavation and repiping and could be costly and operationally complex.
The administrator said the water plant is already increasing process-control chemicals and running sludge processing more frequently during the summer; staff are monitoring for harmful algal blooms (HABs) and preparing signage and public-notification language should detections occur.
The board did not adopt final capital authorization at the meeting but members were urged to consider the gravity-feed testing and the costs as part of next year’s budget cycle. Lman said the gravity-feed work is intended to be a targeted, lower-cost approach that would avoid constructing a new tank if it proves feasible.
Next steps: staff will continue engineering work to scope the gravity-feed test, firm up cost estimates, and report back to the board with recommended contract language and timeline for any required shut-down or temporary measures.
