City water has higher than recommended levels of manganese, iron
A stressed well system has the Columbus City Council considering the installation of a water tower.
“Our situation is just getting to the point that it’s really hard to manage. And it’s not stable, and that’s not a position that’s fun to be in,” said Public Works Director Jim Windingstad during the council’s special workshop on Tuesday, April 9.
Columbus conducted a study to assess its current city water system. The study found that despite usage being below the amount of water available, a water tower may be needed soon and a water treatment plant may be added even further down the line.
The study found that the three wells Columbus’ city water runs on have the ability to support a lot more people and businesses than they support now.
“We looked out to 2075 even, and a lot can change. You could have big users come in, but you’re projected [to have] capacity available for a long time,” said Brian Guldan, a principal engineer from engineering firm Bolton & Menk’s environmental group.
Despite having the capacity for more users on the city’s well system, the need for the water tower is said to be a result of how the water is being accessed from the wells.
“It’s a lot of little things that add up to a catastrophe for us,” Windingstad said, adding his team will check the well functionality every day to ensure nothing is out of place.
The well’s functionality relies on the amount of pressure – the amount of air pushing against water – inside the well. There are instances when water fills the well, reducing pressure, resulting in the well pumps malfunctioning.
Windingstad’s fear is that the challenges the wells occasionally experience, like losing too much pressure, causing it to stop running, would happen at a time they’re needed to put out a fire somewhere.
“I look at [the system], seriously, almost every night before I go to bed because I want to know what I’m in for,” Windingstad said.
Columbus’ three wells were installed at different times and have been patched in to work with one another, but at times, it feels like the opposite for public works.
“It’s three individual systems trying to play nice together,” Windingstad said.
Professionals in the field have examined Columbus’ system to see if the city could be doing anything different to make the system run easier, and responses have been befuddled, with many saying they have not seen a system like this before. Windingstad explained that when a business utilizes a lot of water, the wells will kick on and pump thousands of gallons to meet the demand. When the business shuts off the water source, all that rushing water comes to a halt.
“That water stops, and now you’re pumping that kind of supply into the system and there’s nowhere for it to go. So it really screws with our system, which makes it very difficult to operate,” Windingstad explained, adding it takes time after that for the public works team to recalibrate the system.
The recommended tower, which would hold 150,000 gallons, would ease that burden. Water would flow from the tower to meet any sudden, high demand, while the wells would refill what was taken from the tower in a more controlled time span.
“That’s a really big need for the system, and it’s going to provide reliability in the system, but it’s also going to reduce maintenance,” Guldan said.
The proposed water tower project may take a few years to reach completion and cost around $1.5 million for construction and land acquisition. The larger ticket item of a water treatment plant could cost more than $6 million, but didn’t seem as urgent of a priority for the council during its workshop in early April.
Council member Janet Hegland was wanting to seek more cost-friendly options without a new tower, but Windingstad, Guldan and city engineer Kevin Bittner pushed that it would make sense to remedy the issue before Columbus further expands.
“You’ve been this growing system that’s kind of pieced things together as you needed it, and if you take another step to kind of piece things together, there’s going to be a point down the road where you look back and go, ‘We should have pulled the Band-Aid off right there,’” Guldan said.
While the Bolton & Menk team was assessing the water system, it ran tests to see if there were any potentially harmful minerals in the water, which would be addressed by a water treatment plant. Those tests showed higher levels of iron and manganese in the water than is advised by the Environmental Protection Agency.
“Historically, these compounds did not have any health risks associated with them, but they do cause staining,” Guldan said.
While the EPA doesn’t require cities to limit the amount of manganese in the water, it’s begun assessing health risks of overexposure. Therefore, it advises the amount of adult manganese consumption remain under 0.3 mg mg per liter.
For manganese, Columbus’ wells 1, 2 and 3 reported concentrations at .560 mg/L, .711 mg/L, and .102 mg/L, respectively. For infants younger than 6 months old, the EPA recommends that baby formula isn’t mixed with water that has manganese levels of 0.3 mg/L or higher and given to an infant for more than 10 days per year.
The EPA has set “health advisory guidelines for manganese. The interesting thing right now is these are not mandated. So there is no requirement to meet [guidelines],” Guldan said.
Windingstad has received a few complaints from residents about residues left on their faucets, which he deduces is from manganese, but it isn’t as widespread to prompt the council to splurge on the $6 million project for a water treatment plant.
“A driver I’ve seen in other communities, for the manganese, is that they maybe already had dirty water complaints. Everybody doesn’t like the water because it’s colored. And now comes along an opportunity to get some grant funds to deal with that,” Guldan said.
Even though a water treatment facility isn’t at the top of the council’s agenda, Guldan recommended the council acquire a piece of land that is large enough to house both the water tower and a treatment facility.
“[The water tower] is probably your biggest need, and the manganese is a little subjective,” Guldan said.
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