Engineers present Hancock water plan
Engineers present Hancock water plan
Leaks, fire protection key targets for upgrade
By JANE NORDBERG, DMG Writer
HANCOCK — Like most area communities, the City of Hancock is facing the challenges of operating and maintaining an aging municipal water system.
To that end, engineers from Hitch LLC last week revealed a Water System Master Plan that evaluates the existing water system’s reliability, determines the feasibility of alternative water supply sources, evaluates the impact of potential development, provides recommendations for the future and offers suggestions for funding.
The city was required to complete the plan in accordance with a Department of Environmental Quality directive six years ago.
Project engineers Mike Drewyor and Chuck Johnson presented the plan to the Hancock City Council Wednesday, immediately launching into some bad news.
“You’re losing roughly 45 to 50 percent of your water which can’t be accounted for,” Drewyor told the council. Typically, a water system of similar size has a water loss of about 10 to 15 percent of the total water purchased, he added, with older water systems typically showing a loss of 15 to 20 percent.
“That 47 percent water loss is significantly higher than the average,” Drewyor said.
Citing a table of the Top 20 largest water users in the city, Drewyor said about 4,223 people in the City of Hancock are being served by the system, in addition to approximately 125 people in Franklin Township.
Based on those calculations, Drewyor said, the average residential water consumption (including water loss) is approximately 129 gallons per person per day, relatively high considering the community has very mild summers and very little lawn sprinklers.
Engineers also found that there were a number of areas in the city where excessive drop indicated closed valves in the system. Those included the valves at Quincy and Wolverine, Prospect and Ash, Elevation and Hill, and Ethel and Ingot.
“They don’t correlate, so they need to be investigated and either repaired or replaced,” Drewyor said.
The city’s fire protection system also needed to be upgraded, according to the plan’s findings.
“Thirty-one percent of your system has less than the recommended pressure for fire protection,” Drewyor said.
Options for the city included adding a second transmission line from Painesdale at a cost of $5 million, tying into the Michigan American Water Company from north of the airport, adding a small filtration plant or going in with the Osceola Township water supply.
The most feasible option, Drewyor said, might be to improve the water connection to the City of Houghton’s water supply. That option would involve coordinating with Houghton to install approximately 1,800 lineal feet of parallel transmission main from the Houghton connection to the Portage Lake crossing.
“At $450,000, that might be your cheapest option,” Drewyor told the council.
As for funding, council members were offered two possibilities.
The first option would be financing through U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development, Community Programs. While grants through the program are very competitive, loans are still available at around 4.5 percent for up to a 40-year loan period. According to the master plan, the program expects to have $5.5 million in water/waste loan and grant available in fiscal year 2006.
A second option for financing would be a Drinking Water Revolving Fund, a loan through the Environmental Protection Agency. The advantage to this option, according to the plan, is that the paperwork required for a revolving loan is substantially less than rural development financing, and the ability to borrow funds below the market interest rate. There is expected to be $28 million available from the EPA in fiscal year 2006.
The present interest rate for the DWRF is 2.125 percent, but the loan has its limitations, Drewyor said.
“This program is set up so you can do necessary system repairs to address the issues you face now,” he explained. “You can upgrade and modernize your technology, but these loans cannot be used for new development or expansion.”
Following the presentation, Drewyor answered a number of questions and concerns from council members, including a discussion of whether a storage tank could be dismantled and sold for scrap metal salvage.
Council member Bob Lewis asked how fast the city had to move on the project.
“The DEQ asked us to do this in 2000,” Lewis said. “How long are they going to continue to be patient with us?”
Drewyor said the completion of the five-year master plan showed the city’s intent to move forward.
“The DEQ’s approach is that you need to prioritize and keep chipping away at it,” he said. “You can’t eat the elephant in one sitting, but over time you can get your numbers up to a reasonable standard.”
Following a recommendation by Johnson, the council agreed to participate in a meeting with DWRF representatives and officials from Ontonagon to learn more about the particulars of program funding.
Copies of Hancock’s water system master plan are available for viewing at the City Hall during normal business hours.
Jane Nordberg can be reached at jnordberg@mininggazette.com
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