The City of New Cordell has hit the first milestone set by the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality on the consent order which went into effect last month. The order, issued in response to a series of water quality violations over the course of the past year, required the city to submit an approvable corrective action plan by Aug. 1. The city’s proposed plan was submitted July 28.
The first step in the plan, according the the document submitted to ODEQ, has already taken place. City administrator J.C. Moser wrote in the proposal that this city has made adjustments to the disinfectant chemicals used to treat the city’s water.
Moser said the “primary” cause of Cordell’s repeated violations is the blending of water from the city’s well fields with the water the city purchases from Foss Master Conservancy District.
“The blending of chlorinated water from our well fields with the chloraminated water from Foss Conservancy District is the primary cause of the failure to maintain adequate disinfectant concentrations in the drinking water system,” he wrote in the July 28 action plan. “The city has quit feeding sodium hypochlorite at the booster pump station in town and has adjusted the gas chlorine system to reduce the potential for the disinfectants to cancel each other out. This appears to have reduced the frequency in which residuals are diminished in the system, but this is not a permanent solution.”
When asked why the adjustments were just recently made when the city has known about this issue for quite a long time, Moser said the city has been trying to switch for about 20 years.
“The city has been using both disinfectants since Foss Reservoir changed their disinfectant to Chloramines somewhere around 2000 and the city has been trying not to change to the same disinfectant since that time,” he said. “We were unable to pump from both water sources at the same time until just recently when we installed variable frequency drives to control our pumps. The Cordell pump is much larger than the Foss pump and would pump 66 percent more water than Foss at the same time which would dilute the chloramines in the Foss water too much.”
The city’s proposed permanent solution is a construction project to implement “disinfectant feed improvements” to the existing water system. According to the proposed schedule, construction is expected to be complete by April 20, 2021.
To that end, the city entered into a contract with Myers Engineering of Oklahoma City. Under the terms of that contract, approved by the New Cordell Utility Authority Board on July 20, Myers will be paid a lump sum of $7,800 to prepare a hydraulic network analysis and an additional $24,500 to design the disinfectant system upgrades. The city also agreed to pay Myers an additional $880 per working day for residential project representation services.
Assuming ODEQ approves the proposed plan, the engineering report will be completed and submitted by Sept. 22, 2020. If that is approved by Nov. 2, the city will then begin the construction permit process, which is scheduled for completion by Nov. 30, with the hope of receiving permit approval from DEQ by Jan. 5, 2021. Public bids for the construction project are expected to be due by Feb. 9, 2021, with the contract being awarded by the council Feb. 15 and construction finishing by April 20.