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Treatment plant needs discussed with council

By Terah Shear, Guard Staff Writer

News | Published on Wednesday July 11, 2007

Jeff Dehnhardt and Jim Ulmer from McGoodwin Williams and Yates engineering firm of Fayetteville presented the City of Batesville with an Inflow and Infiltration study and flow monitoring report for the utility department at Tuesday’s council meeting.

“There are three issues regarding your system that we have to deal with. No. 1 is that the plant is hydraulically overloaded. The lift station capacity is in question and we know that the collection system experiences overflows,” Ulmer said.

He said there are two main things that cause those problems: Infiltration and Inflow. Infiltration is water that enters the sewer system through cracks and pipe joints via groundwater and inflow is the rapid entry of storm water through structural problems with direct access to the surface.

The problem is not only on the municipal side but also on the public side, Ulmer said.

The company did a flow monitoring study in dry and wet weather with 14 flow monitors installed system-wide that measured the velocity and depth of flow and calculated the sewer system flow, and four rain gauges were installed.During the dry weather, flow from April 3-9 varied from 2.6 million gallons a day (MGD) to 5.5 MGD. During wet weather flow the peak was 11.5 MGD during a 1.3 inch rainfall. Ulmer said that the lift stations were maxed out in storm conditions and they could possibly, in a severe weather event, be dysfunctional. On June 24 Batesville received a five-inch rain in a short time span, and the city received another five-inch rainfall from June 30 to July 1; again, the flow system was maximized.

Ulmer recommended that with rehabilitation Batesville’s treatment plant flow rates could be improved by 30 percent.

“If you go into rehabilitation of your system, and you’ve been working on that over the years... You have a crew of people who are dedicated to finding the leaks and inspecting the manholes, closed circuit television, smoke testing, you have all the capabilities already on your staff,” Ulmer told the council. He said the rehabilitation could be a five-year effort.

Ulmer said there is a relationship between the White River and the water system and Poke Bayou and the water system. When either of those bodies of water flood, it results in inflow into the system.

Mayor Rick Elumbaugh agreed in saying that improvements need to be made on the city side and the public side. Elumbaugh also said the general public needs to be educated about the storm drains.

“There are people who drain their swimming pools into the storm drains,” he said.

Alderman R.L. Carpenter asked if the city had the authority to call a citizen and tell them to repair a sewer line problem, and the council agreed that there was a sewer use ordinance.

Alderman Doug Matthews also said that a trip with the new engineer, Damon Johnson, and wastewater treatment plant manager Eugene Townsley was canceled due to the flooding in Texas, but it will be rescheduled.

Matthews said they are scheduled to look at four systems.