Brown water remedies
detailed by engineer
Aggressive flushing
to take place as costly solutions are explored
Less than a month after officials held a special meeting to address concerns about water discoloration in Milltown residents’ homes, Borough Engineer Greg Valesi has completed a preliminary report on what can be done to bring immediate relief to the residents who are most affected.
"As requested by the council, we studied the water problems," Valesi said, referring to his engineering firm, CME Associates. Valesi reviewed a list of approximately 30 residents who attended a Nov. 20 utilities meeting where borough officials and residents discussed the water problems they were experiencing.
Borough Councilman Gary Walters, who chairs the council’s utilities subcommittee, arranged last month’s meeting when he noted a recent increase in complaints from residents about water that was discolored, foul-smelling or containing sediment.
"We plotted the location of the major complaints on a map," Valesi said. "The majority of the complaints are occurring on the end of dead-end water mains," he said, referring to homes on cul de sacs.
"Accordingly, we looked at six areas [dead ends] where there are stagnant water problems," Valesi said. "We recommend an aggressive hydrant-flushing program."
While Valesi pinpointed one cause of the discoloration problem in the borough, no long-term solutions such as looping these dead end mains into existing main lines will be performed until the borough can determine how it will fund such a project, Borough Business Administrator Richard Rydstrom said.
"The engineer is designing a uni-directional flushing approach, which means flushing in the opposite direction to break loose particles that may be in pipes," Rydstrom said about what may become a standard approach to hydrant flushing throughout the borough. Flushing is performed twice a year.
"It’s a lot more complex than turning the hydrant on and off," Rydstrom said. "We may do the entire borough in that fashion, or we may take selected portions, say dead end lines, and do those lines more frequently. The engineer still has to design a report and schedule when this can be done."
Reversing the water flow — particularly in the six cul de sacs determined by the borough engineer to be most affected by discolored water — will probably take place once the engineer’s report is finalized. Rydstrom estimated that uni-directional flushing will begin within the next three months in the six targeted dead end sections of the borough.
In the cul de sacs, Rydstrom said, the water does not travel in a continuous flow. The water only moves through the pipes into the main water lines when homeowners turn on faucets, dishwashers, hoses, etc. At all other times, the water remains stagnant and accumulates sediment as a result. That sediment is what is causing the brown water residents are seeing.
Rydstrom described the reverse flushing as one immediate and inexpensive solution to help improve the water discoloration in the homes most affected.
The cost to loop dead end water mains into the main lines could cost up to $1 million, he said, and the borough needs to obtain funding to do this.
"One estimate we received was for $565,400. That’s just for the cost of construction. It doesn’t include design and engineering work, inspection fees and other costs. I would guess it’s close to $1 million to loop all of the dead ends," he said of the six dead end lines already identified for future looping. "I’m in the process of applying for grant money to get this done," he added.
According to Valesi’s report, another cause of the water discoloration problem is the age of some of the water lines, which are close to 100 years old. Because the cost of cleaning and relining these water lines is also costly, a short-term solution recommended by Valesi was to perform random core sampling throughout all the borough’s water lines. Small pieces of inner pipes would be removed and examined, Rydstrom said.
The goal would be to determine where in the borough the degree of decay in the lines is the worst and — when funding is available — to eventually replace those lines first.
"The cleaning and relining program is the lowest item on the list because it’s far more expensive than these other methods that we can implement quickly to resolve the problems. Our water rates would just go out of sight," Rydstrom said.
While the engineer’s report, when completed, will provide the borough with estimates on the costs for the hydrant flushing, core sampling and the cleaning and relining of old water mains, Rydstrom said it could cost up to $750,000 to clean and reline one mile of piping along Main Street.
"One estimate I’ve received for Main Street is $750,000," Rydstrom said.
"If I wanted to give residents perfect water, I’d have to reline every pipe in the borough. The quality of life issue is something we are desperately trying to resolve to keep everybody happy."