The Town of Goldsby had to impose a mandatory water rationing for one day a week on outside watering last summer. Mayor Mike Herrin said as bad as things were this summer, you have to expect them to be bad next summer, but the Town is steadily working towards a solution.
Herrin said the Town is working on a fix that will provide more water to their water storage towers in the west and south of the community. They just completed a 12” water line from State Highway 9 to W. Chestnut Road. Herrin said previously the Town only had an 8” line to the tower from there, but they just completed the 12” line from there to the tower, and a 12” line going east along Center Road to Main Street (State Highway 74) to feed the commercial development in the area.
A second project they intend to do is a new 12” line across the airport going approximately 3.5 miles north and west to help feed the west water tower, which is where the largest amount of Goldsby’s growth is right now. Herrin said the northwest part of town uses a significant amount of water compared to the south side.
“This won’t be enough. This is a temporary improvement that will better sustain the high usage in the summer from that west tower,” Herrin said. Herrin said there’s a chance the Town can get the 12” line in place by next summer, but even if they do it doesn’t mean there won’t still be water rationing.
“I think the best case scenario is that we go to odd/ even water rationing,” Herrin said. ‘We do believe that if we have good compliance of the odd/even water rationing it would take care of the problem.”
During the Town’s November meeting last Thursday, the Board of Trustees approved a project for a Water Model study at a cost of $55,000. They also approved seeking a Rural Economic Action Plan (REAP) grant to pay for the Water Model.
Herrin said an engineer will gather all of the information the Town has on the complete water system — every bit of the infrastructure including the size of lines and the meters.
“They take these to an extreme level as far as understanding the pressures and the volume, so what we can do when the model is complete is input the information about new developments, and it provides the source, volume and pressure to accommodate the new growth,” Herrin said. “It gives us an expert engineer to help us make those decisions instead of us doing it as laymen.”
The Water Model will help determine whether an 18” water line from the treatment plant to the 12” line at Santa Fe is what’s needed (related story on page 1 of this week’s Newcastle Pacer.) Herrin said an 18” line is about a five year project and a bunch of money. He added that the Water Model will also help the Town determine what the Newcastle water might do for them, and whether it might help satisfy the summer demand.
Herrin said the Town plans to do a better job of notifying people and educating people. He said they want the public to be aware of the situation and know that the Town “is trying to fix it, but it’s not fixed yet.”
