Supplier says city can buy as much as wants, needs
By MINDY TATE, Editor
mtate@williamsonherald.com
The
good will was flowing as easily as a country stream Tuesday night
between members of the Franklin Board of Mayor and Aldermen and Harpeth
Valley Utility District, the city’s major drinking water supplier.
It was the first time in years that the two entities had met face to
face to discuss the city’s water needs and its desire to make sure that
severe water restrictions imposed last summer during a severe drought
do not happen again.
“The city had a horrific summer with water,” Franklin Mayor John
Schroer said. “I think the goal, my goal at least, in all of this is to
make sure Franklin has good quality water at the least expensive
method.”
Harpeth Valley Utility District, whose treatment plant is located on
the Cumberland River in western Williamson County, supplies water to
Williamson County to cities like Franklin, Brentwood and Fairview and
to independent utility districts like HB&TS, Mallory Valley and
Milcrofton. In fact, as much as 80 percent of the water treated by HVUD
is headed to Williamson County during peak months, according to General
Manager John Brown.
And with expansion projects currently under way, HVUD can send more to the county and specifically to Franklin.
“Harpeth Valley said in the 1980s they would float the statue off the
Square,” Brown told aldermen. “I am not here to say anything that brash
tonight. We are not here saying we will float the statue off the
Square, but given the time to build and to build for Williamson County,
(we can meet demand).”
During its peak month in 2007, Franklin received 21.622 million gallons
of water from HVUD. The city’s maximum draw day was Oct. 15, when
Franklin pulled 8.09 million gallons, Brown said.
Schroer said he was “dismayed” to hear Brown say HVUD had three tanks
for service to Franklin all above 75 percent capacity during the
drought, translating to 2 million additional gallons available on that
peak day, when the city was still under some water restrictions.
“There was an additional 2 million gallons that we believe the city of
Franklin had the possibility of taking,” Brown said. “You have to
remember that Franklin’s connections, they are the first connections on
to our system in Williamson County.
“The city of Brentwood had no restrictions at that time,” Brown said.
“I actually had conversations with some of the staff, with the city of
Franklin, that had actually contacted us to say, ‘We want you to put
water restrictions on everybody in Williamson County.’ Our response to
that was, ‘Thanks for that, but we are starting every day with our
tanks full. Everyone else is getting what they need.”
HVUD has the capacity to supply as much as 9 million gallons of water
today, according to Jack Lyle, HVUD staff engineer, and when a plant
expansion is completed in August, that number could go as high as 13
million. Another expansion is expected to be completed early next year
and Lyle said HVUD could provide the city as much as 19 million gallons
per day at that time.
Local governments and utilities provide HVUD with water need
projections annually for the next five years. A chart provided by HVUD
showed that since 1999, the peak flow delivered has only increased by 2
percent while similar numbers for surrounding governments have
increased as much as 139.5 percent for Brentwood.
Franklin has relied on the Harpeth River to provide as much as 2
million gallons of water per day to the city’s treatment plant on
Lewisburg Pike. According to Schroer, the Harpeth can fill the city’s
water needs 65 percent to 70 percent of the time, with the city’s 1
million gallon storage reservoir and other tanks around the city.
For more than one year, city officials have been wrestling with
expansion of the city’s treatment plant to a 4 million gallon capacity.
Consultant reports have left aldermen with additional questions as well
as the knowledge that if the city expands the plant at a cost of
millions of dollars, it still has additional capital improvement costs
of millions of dollars to move the water through the city.
The issue of redundancy — the rare instance when HVUD experiences a
power outage or is unable to draw from the seemingly bottomless
Cumberland — has been one of the aldermen’s concerns, as well as paying
HVUD for the minimum bill when the city may not need as much water to
meet demand.
“It would be easy for us, if we took the energy to do that, to find out
what our maximum usage of water would be for the future, not just 10
years or 20 years, but for the future based on our current urban growth
boundary,” Schroer said, since the city is currently surrounded by
other water utility districts.
As for redundancy, Brown pointed out that Brentwood receives as much as
2 million gallons daily from Metro Nashville and that HVUD would not
mind if Franklin could find a secondary supplier, such as Dickson,
which has its own 11 million gallon plant on the Cumberland River and
supplies water to Fairview.
Harpeth River Watershed Association Director Dorie Bolze said Wednesday
the meeting was something her organization had been working for for two
years.
“Three different times the aldermen have asked to have a meeting with
Harpeth Valley Utility District,” Bolze said, adding that city staff
threw up “bogeyman” issues and relied on consultant reports, which
alderman and Schroer have said they do not “buy.”
“This is all about summertime when the Harpeth cannot supply us with
water,” Bolze said, and that the city “never asked (HVUD) for enough
water in the summer.”
Posted on: 3/6/2008
|
