Planning for water now and later

The city of Jackson, bigger than it has ever been and growing faster than it has ever grown, is dabbling in uncharted water.

Will there be enough water and will the water be clean enough and have enough pressure to meet the demands of the growing city?

Jackson has hired a St. Louis engineering firm to look into those issues. Horner & Shifrin Inc. is in the process of laying out both a short-term and a long-range needs assessment for the city.

"The town's growing, obviously," said Jackson public works director Rodney Bollinger. "We need to have this firm take a hard look at a couple of things. We're outgrowing our plants, and we had to get on the ball and start getting some recommendations. The water plant study sketches out five years and will tell what the needs are at the water plants. But with this agreement, they'll also take us into a 20-year plan."

The short-term study should be completed sometime late this summer, Bollinger said, while the long-range examination should be done sometime in 2004, said Jim McCleish, a project manager from Horner & Shifrin.

Even before the Jackson Board of Aldermen agreed to the study, Bollinger and Mark Waller, a lab technician at the city's water plant, said they knew there were fairly urgent needs. The town has already installed 10 miles of new 8- to 10-inch water mains around the city in the last three years. In 1998, the maximum daily demand was 1.87 million gallons. By 2001, that total had grown to 2.15 million gallons, and Horner & Shifrin has estimated that the maximum daily demand in 2003 will be 3.36 million gallons, or 2,333 gallons per minute.

The city has not yet reached its maximum supply capacity, which is 2,200 gallons per minute. But, Bollinger said, the city has come close to reaching that capacity in the summer, which is one reason a new well will be added on the north end of town in the Jackson Industrial Park. At the last board of aldermen meeting, a public hearing was scheduled concerning the water well. The new well would allow the city to distribute 2,500 gallons per minute, Bollinger said. The new well would cost roughly $350,000 and be paid from a bond issue that was passed in 1997, he said.

Bollinger said there have been a few occasions where low water pressure has been an issue, especially on the outskirts of town where the city's water system has expanded.

That wasn't the case for Nancy Wickham, who lives with her husband in a fairly new-built home on Route D in Jackson.

"We haven't had a problem, not a bit," she said. "The water tastes fine and we've had no pressure problems at all. And I'd be the first to complain if I didn't have good water pressure in my shower."

While the noticeable problems to residents may have been minimal, the increased demand has taken a toll on the city's facilities.

First and foremost, the filter media -- a system which uses sand, rock and carbon as the last line of filtering before the water is sent out to the public -- needs replacement, Bollinger said.

Waller said over time, the filters become clogged. He likened the filter to a colander and the buildup to a paper towel over the colander.

He said the filters affect both the volume and the quality of the water from the water plant. The filters will cost roughly $13,000.

The city also plans to add two new high-service pumps to its system this year, Bollinger said. These pumps would be a major upgrade to the system and would allow the city to divide the city into two sections. The pumps will cost roughly $650,000 and would be paid for with funds from the 1997 bond issue. Those pumps will almost wipe out the money from the bond issue, Bollinger said.

Before the city moves forward with the two projects, Bollinger said he wants to make sure they are in line with the study.

McCleish of Horner & Shifrin said those projects are part of the city's water improvement plan that was done in 1998. He said those projects would be rolled over into the new plans prepared by his firm.

Phases of study

McCleish said his firm's study is broken up into five phases, two of which fall under the interim, immediate needs. The first of those phases will be to study the city's water quality, the demand and regulatory impact; to do a supply analysis and study the treatment plant capacity and capability, including the filtration and high service pumping.

The second phase will include evaluations of treatability issues, hydraulic issues, a functional assessment and improvement plan details.

From there, the study could go in any number of directions, McCleish said, depending on the findings.

"That's why they're doing the study," he said of the city.

McCleish said the firm is still in an information-gathering mode, but said Jackson is going about its planning the right way.

"Jackson is growing rapidly and that makes it more important for those guys to be more proactive and aggressive in addressing the water system," he said. "A lot of cities get caught behind because of money issues or not wanting to spend and plan. They get in a bind and have to tell people they can't use water. Jackson is not in that situation yet, but they're being proactive so they won't have to be."

bmiller@semissourian.com

243-6635