City of New Cordell Switched Production To Well Fields, Residents Not Impacted By Interruption
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Overhead view of the Foss clarifier. Bob Henline | The Cordell Beacon -
A Foss Reservoir Master Conservancy District Employee climbs into the clarifier to examine the damage to the sweeper arm. Bob Henline | The Cordell Beacon
The flow of water to several cities and towns in Washita and Custer counties from Foss Reservoir stopped on Saturday, April 25, due to a mechanical failure.
While the town of Hobart had to immediately request residents to cut back on their water use to stretch out their available water supply, which was limited to only what was present in their tanks, residents of the Cordell experienced little to no impact from the interruption as the city promptly switched the flow of water from Foss to the city’s back-up water plan - the city’s well fields west of town.
According to Foss Reservoir Master Conservancy District Shawn Dewees, the interruption was caused by a mechanical failure in the water plant’s clarifier. The clarifier is the first phase of treating water from the reservoir for residential use.
Inside the 700,000 gallon water tank, the sweep arms of the clarifier push solid sediment - dirt basically - under a giant bonnet where a propeller helps separate the solids from the liquids, allowing the solids to gather and fall into a discharge pipe. The water is then pushed through a settling pond and sand and chemical filters before it is pumped to the various muncipalities that purchase water from the reservoir. Those municipalities include Cordell, Hobart, Bessie, Clinton, Arapaho, and Butler, and service to roughly 17,000 customers.
Dewees said the drive train on the sweeper arms experienced a mechanical failure which put the sweeper arm mechanism in a bind. That issue forced Foss to shut down the 65-year-old clarifier mechanism to make repairs. As of Sunday, April 26, crews were working to drain the massive tank and clear built-up sediment from the sweeper arms to determine the extent of the damage.
An update on the status of repairs was not available as of press time on Tuesday, April 28, but Cordell city administrator J.C. Moser confirmed that as of Monday, April 27, he had not been notified of the plant coming back on-line. Moser said the city owns a large well field west of town and switched the city’s pumps to pull water from those wells instead of Foss as soon as he received notification that the clarifier was down. The wells, he said, are more than sufficient to provide for the needs of Cordell’s residents so there was no need to call for conservation measures.