MOUNT VERNON — Knox County Water & Wastewater superintendent Ron Simpson updated the county commissioners Thursday morning about the water control situation in Apple Valley brought about by Sunday’s windstorm damage.
As of 1 p.m. Thursday, most of the east side of Apple Valley was still without power, but the well field that supplies water to the development had come back online around 6:30 p.m., according to Simpson. For the four days prior, the water flow was maintained by the use of emergency backup generators, two of which belonged to the county, one of which was rented. According to Simpson, the well field was converted back to in-line power by 9 p.m. Wednesday night. He added that the booster station and east side lift stations are still being run by small generators.
The commissioners were also informed that the county’s largest generator, a 150-kilowatt machine, went down Wednesday and is being looked at to see if it would be cost effective to repair it. Otherwise, Simpson said, the wastewater department did not suffer any storm damage.
In other wastewater business, Simpson said the Howard processing plant would be changing from gas to liquid chlorine at the recommendation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Liquid chlorine is regarded as safer and less likely to leak from the system.
Simpson also said he met with ADR Engineering to work on pending projects. He said ADR was taking samples from the wells which supply Apple Valley to determine if recently detected trace elements of copper are coming from the groundwater or deterioration of pipes in residents’ homes. Commissioner Allen Stockberger said the phosphorous treatment used to process water might cause that sort of deterioration in domestic pipes. Simpson added that they would be testing influent and effluent monthly to see if the copper is being caught by the processing plant.
Stockberger noted that he and Commissioner Robert Wise recently toured a biofuels facility in Akron where gas was being collected from the anaerobic composting of wastewater sludge. Stockberger said that, unfortunately, the Howard plant was too small for such a process to be feasible in Knox County.
