Those areas include the multi-million-dollar Ohio 4 water main replacement project, as well as the water main replacement projects on Mack and Ross roads, and Seward Road. The city had also spent a lot of its focus on the wastewater plant over the last decade, related to controls, automation and new instruments, Sackenheim said.
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Now officials will shift focus to the water facility, with a focus on updating the city’s wells, chemical feed system, pumps, motors and controls to maintain the city’s water quality.
Rehabilitating the 1.5-million-gallon Seward Road water tower and installing a submersible mixer is the biggest public utilities line item for 2020. The rehabilitation will add decades of life to the tower and includes repainting and sandblasting as early as this spring. The mixer is meant to improve water quality.
“We mix the water which decreases water age, increases water freshness, increases water quality,” Sackenheim said. “We feel like it’s got a legitimate water-quality benefit to our customers.”
The city has installed a mixer at the Winton Road and Harbin Park water towers and will install a fourth mixer as early as later this year. A mixer in the fifth tower — the 500,000-gallon tower also at Seward Road — will be done likely in 2022 when that tank is rehabilitated.
The Seward Road water tower rehab and mixer installation will cost nearly $800,000, with about $25,000 to $30,000 of that budgeted for the mixer.
The city will also work on the Groh Lane water plant this year, improving two tanks after earlier working on the other two. Crews are now sandblasting the third tank to expose the steel mechanisms which will be cleaned, refinished and coated before a new layer of cement is added. The fourth one is expected to be done later this year.
Work on the four tanks is expected to cost $800,000 to $1 million.
These tanks soften the hard water pulled from the ground, and softening the water prevents the “scales and crud” that can build on water fixtures.
“Really hard water is also not good for appliances, like dishwashers and washing machines,” Sackenheim said.
The last major water plant project slated for this year involves replacing two 30-ton storage vessels for the plant’s carbon dioxide feed system. Sackenheim said there will be new controls and automation installed to improve water quality, which will also save the city money.
The carbon dioxide feed system balances the pH of the water, taking the acidity out, because “we want to make sure the water we’re sending out to our customers is stable.”
This is an estimated $550,000 project, and installation is expected for this spring.
Wastewater projects
There is one wastewater facility project that will finish up this year.
A contractor is replacing the Homeward Way lift station. The $660,000 project will add capacity to the sewer system and prevent backups in the businesses and newer school buildings in the area.
Sackenheim said the plan is to bid the project at the end of this year for construction in 2021. Engineering is budgeted for $200,000, and he said construction could cost about $2.5 million.
2021 water main
The city has $750,000 on the books for 2021 for its next distribution project, but Sackenhiem said, “we will be evaluating what that will be.”
He said it could be a water main replacement at Winton and Mack roads near the golf course, but it could be on John Gray Road west of Pleasant Avenue. He said John Gray Road has been a problematic area with water main breaks.
“That’s an area we could look at possible engineering this year for a possible project in 2021,” he said.
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