KINGWOOD — Call your elected representatives and the State Public Service Commission to complain about delays in the water project, Public Service District 1 urged customers Tuesday.
“I urge everyone, call the public service commission, call your delegates, call them all,” Mike Adams said. “It’s a struggle. … I’ve never been brow beaten so much in my life over something we have no control over.”
Go to the PSD’s Facebook site and click on the link to write the PSC, he said. Letters are preferred to phone calls.
PSD 1 continues to be criticized by customers over the taste and appearance of water drawn from a temporary source called Impoundment 6.
Water has been running low in Impoundment 6, PSD 1 Board Member Mike Adams told the Preston County Commission on Tuesday. It’s been at about 20 inches, he said.
Gravity feed from Blue Hole, another source, wasn’t sufficient, so pumps were run all night Monday.
“We’re going to probably continue to pump all week, until we just run out of water,” there, Adams said.
It cost about $700 every two days for fuel for the pump, he said, “which is money the district really could use in other ways.”
The beaver dam is back at the hole, too, he noted. When the district first tapped into the pond, it removed what workers thought was a log jam. It turned out to be a beaver dam, and the state Division of Natural Resources halted the work, Adams said.
The state PSC approved an emergency interim rate increase last week for the district. Before it granted that increase, the state had the district audited and heard from engineers, accountants and attorneys who looked at the PSD.
“In 2017, this district was a stable, operating PSD. We had no financial woes. Things were going fine. In April of 2018, we were required to move off of Impoundment 1, which is where they’re rehabbing the dam,” Adams said.
At the time, PSD 1 was paying $1,800 per month to treat water at Impoundment 1, the water behind a dam on Ruby Farms.
At Impoundment 6, chemical costs are $8,000 to $10,000 per month, Adams said.
“The organics in there are just way different than,” in Impoundment 1, Adams said.
From April 2018 to July 15 this year, the district ran about $250,000 deficit. The change was the water treatment cost and all the additional manpower. At the end of this week, sludge basins and ponds will be cleaned, a $55,000 expense.
“We’re trying to ask why the district has to support all this bill?” Adams said. “This is something that the project is a year overdue.”
Adams gave an example of the dam project delays. There are 60 levels of concrete that have to be put on the dam. On Nov. 7, the contractor discovered that the 15th pour didn’t meet specs. Until Nov. 10, “they argued how” they would remove the roller compacted concrete, Adams said.
“Missing four days of good weather that we could have been working,” he added. On Nov. 10, they fixed the problem. Yesterday one level of concrete was poured.
“Who is in charge of the project?” Adams asked, reiterating a question raised earlier by the district and county commissioners.
The dam project is out of the district’s control because the district doesn’t own the dam. The contractor is not being penalized for being over deadline, Adams said. The contractor met with the National Resources Conservation Service behind closed doors, and the contractor got a $1.8 million settlement from the de-watering company. The district has gotten $22,000 of a promised $120,000 for extra chemical costs, said Adams.
“To this day,” no one has said how the extra expenses to the district will be handled, he said.
Meanwhile, PSD 1 employees work 80 to 90 hours per week trying to keep water flowing and lines flushed. Chemists from as far as California have tried to determine how to make it more palatable.
“There isn’t any unsafe water out there. The biggest issues we have are color and odor,” Adams said. PSD 1 is hooked to Clinton District, which will sell it up to 50,000 gallons per day. Sometime this week, PSD 1 will put a hydrant at the Gordon Church where customers can fill up jugs or containers free with Clinton’s water.
Last month, PSD 1 paid $5,735 to Clinton District for water to 104 customers. That’s more than PSD 1 customers paid for it.
He urged everyone to attend the PSD’s meetings the fourth Tuesday of each month to learn the truth about the project.
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