Published Thursday, January 30, 2003
flawed from start?
studying system
Herald Staff Writer
Greenville's 12-year-old, multi-million water plant was built wrong, said Municipal Authority Board Chairman Dick Miller.
At Tuesday's meeting of the authority board, Thomas L. Thompson of the authority's new engineering firm, Gannett Fleming, fielded questions from board members concerning one of the plant's design flaws.
The board will have to build hatches on the roof of the plant so the vertical turbine water pumps, which keep the water flowing, can be removed.
"Allegations like this have been haunting us since the plant was built," Miller said. "The roof is too low to pull the pumps out of the ground. ... If that isn't a design flaw, I don't know what is."
The authority has to add the roof hatches, at a budgeted cost of $15,000, to remove the pumps.
Thompson said a Gannet Fleming engineer will go to the plant within the next week to survey the situation. Gannet Fleming needs to survey the structural integrity of the roof, he said, before installation of the hatches can begin.
Problems with the plant's design could be contributing to ongoing problems with water flow.
The authority's former engineering firm, Killiam Associates, has theorized that sand from the Shenango River is getting into the pump and clogging its mechanisms. That could be what is slowing the pump to 75 percent or 80 percent of its capacity, Thompson said.
"It is not that complex of a process," Thompson said, adding the concentration of sand in the water shouldn't reduce pump flow that much. "We need to look at if this is a problem with the pump, or a problem with the plant itself."
A comprehensive study of the water system is in the works, and authority board members said the study should turn up any other problems with the plant.
Attempts to reach a representative of BCM, the firm that built the water plant in 1989, were unsuccessful. A receptionist at the company's Pittsburgh office said information on projects is kept only for seven years.