Submitted photo Randy Woodbury, city Department of Public Works director, holds a map at a recent meeting.

With local water issues in the forefront recently, Dunkirk Department of Public Works Director Randy Woodbury decided to offer details about the city’s interconnection with Fredonia earlier this month. Woodbury gave a presentation packed with history and data at a meeting of the city Common Council’s Department of Public Works Committee.

He began at the very beginning, stating the Dunkirk-to-Fredonia connecting line was established in the early 1970s after Hurricane Agnes caused silting at Fredonia’s reservoir. The connection was upgraded in the 1990s with a small pump station on Vineyard Drive, “to supplement Fredonia during possible summer droughts when the reservoir system sometimes is at low levels,” according to a written version of the presentation, provided by Woodbury. The station tripled the capacity of the interconnect, from 200 gallons per minute (GPM) to 600.

“However,” he continued, “the station fell into disrepair and was disassembled and rebuilt over many months a few years ago and was not in service yet when Fredonia faced a three-week boil water event (in September 2020).” It can currently operate at up to 800 gallons per minute but runs best at 400-600 GPM.

Woodbury stated that “recent total flow to Fredonia to assist during their treatment plant improvements and during other needs” amounts to 3.7 million gallons.

He then made a statement related to the city’s major water main break on Lake Shore Drive on Aug. 31. “In late August of 2021, the feed to Fredonia was sustained at 600 GPM for several days but the Fredonia pump station rather mysteriously and rapidly switched off and then on to 400 GPM right before a large break occurred … where the feed to Fredonia from the Dunkirk main pumps turns southerly to feed the interconnect.”

He called the events “time synchronous and perhaps related” but said procedures are in place to prevent them from happening again.

Woodbury then detailed the Dunkirk-to-Fredonia feed that happened Feb. 28 after a main break near Temple Street stressed the village’s system.

It lasted seven hours and brought 153,000 gallons of water to Fredonia, he said. Woodbury asserted that complaints of colored water in Fredonia were reported at 6:30 a.m., two hours before the feed was turned on. “This is mentioned because prior water color in Fredonia was mentioned as possibly being from the Dunkirk feed, which Dunkirk feels is not the case,” he said.

A similar Fredonia-to-Dunkirk feeder system established in the ’90s can feed the D & F Plaza and Vineyard Drive at about 300 GPM, Woodbury went on. The system has been used three times on two occasions — one of them the Aug. 31 main rupture on Lake Shore Drive, the other being city upgrades to its Main Street water station.

He said each feed was shut off after around three hours “as Fredonia requested such to not stress their facilities that were still under construction.”

Woodbury ended with a comparison of Dunkirk and Fredonia water systems.

While Fredonia uses a reservoir, “we get our water half a mile out from Lighthouse Point (at Point Gratiot). It’s in 30 feet of water.” He said Fredonia’s system averages a flow of 800 gallons per minute with a practical maximum of 1300 GPM. Dunkirk’s system — which also serves North County Water District customers in neighboring towns — has an average flow of 2,500 GPM but could go as high as 7,000.

“There’s quite a bit of difference between what we’re producing now and what we can produce,” he said.