(Harlan) The City of Harlan is facing some serious concerns with its water supply.
At Thursday’s Harlan Municipal Utilities Board of Trustees Meeting, Joseph Kellinger with McClure Engineering Company outlined the challenges and potential solutions. One of the main issues is the aging wells. “Most of these wells were drilled back in the ’60’s and ’70’s with the most recent being drilled in 1989.” Kellinger adds, “The anticipated life cycle of a well is 30 years. So all of HMU’s wells exceed the anticipated useful life. The average age of these wells is 51-years-old.”
Kellinger adds the wells are old, unreliable, and not producing enough water. The other problem is corroded pipes. Effective diameters within the pipes have decreased up to 65%. “If I’m being quite honest, the utility is in danger of not producing enough water to meet your customer needs on a daily basis. Not only considering peak demand, you’re in danger of not meeting your customer’s needs tomorrow. If you can’t do that the local economy can be severely impacted.”
Kellinger reiterated the water supply issues were not due to the production and capacity of the aquifer. “You see this in nature and life and machines and everything. Things just deteriorate over time and they aren’t as effective as they used to be. When it comes to infrastructure what that means is it needs to be replaced with new, productive pieces of infrastructure.”
There are options available to fix the problems, but it could be a multi-year process with 12-18 months in an engineering phase and approximately 12 months of construction work. “Really the issues happening here are a chronic lack of investment into the maintenance and protection of the raw water infrastructure. The other hard truth to accept is the solutions to these problems won’t occur overnight either.”
Kellinger explained the issues have dated back to at least 2001 and the most recent major investment came in 1989. Necessary upgrades are estimated at $5-6 million, but there are some possible assistance options they might qualify for such as a 30-year Drinking Water State Revolving Fund and a 40-year USDA Loan.
