Tri-County water authority moves forward with system repairs
FREDERICKTOWN – A beleaguered water authority in Fredericktown started to make sweeping repairs to its operations to remove cancer-causing chemicals from its supply.
The state Department of Environmental Protection approved seven permits that will allow Tri-County Joint Municipal Authority to perform such projects as replacing filters at its treatment plant to remove trihalomethanes from the water. Those chemicals resulted in many warnings being mailed to authority customers, the DEP said Thursday.
“They had a big hill to climb out of,” DEP spokesman John Poister said. “Scenery Hill will be getting much fresher water.”
DEP fined the authority $23,400 last year in an 18-page order that dealt with it having a slew of missing records, illegal overflows into the Monongahela River, unaccounted water withdrawals and treatment issues. The investigation into the authority began about the same time its board learned in January 2014 that Tri-County’s staff wasn’t filing the required monthly reports to DEP about releases of waste into the river for the previous four years. The authority responded by firing and replacing its management and making other engineering improvements to the plant at 26 Monongahela Ave.
Poister said the seven new DEP permits will lead to improvements designed to solve all of the authority’s water supply problems.
Trihalomethanes form when water sits stagnant in pipes in higher elevations such as Scenery Hill.
The authority will construct a booster station to increase the flow of water to that area, Poister said.
Dave Bojtos, operations manager at the authority, said it’s already working on a $122,000 project to replace the plant’s filters, and one of the seven issues already was corrected.
“We’re moving forward,” Bojtos said.
He also said water bills received by customers will not increase because the authority was able to secure grants to help pay for the projects. The authority has two years to complete all of the work, the cost of which has not yet been tabulated, he said.
The plant serves about 3,500 customers.