Lack of rain, pump problem impact water plant
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Two weeks of sunshine is evidently troubling the Fredonia water treatment plant and reservoir. There's a dark cloud there, anyway, due to a snag in a chlorination improvement project.
A water conservation order for the village continued Monday -- the week after water system director Luis Fred told officials that one of his new chlorination pumps is already broken.
"We remain under a temporary Water Conservation due to the severe lack of rain," Fredonia's official social media page posted early Monday morning. The page is controlled by Mayor Michael Ferguson.
The post reminded that Fredonia water customers can conserve by only doing full loads of laundry and dishes; keeping showers shorter; and keeping away from watering lawns or washing cars.
"Working together we can get through this," the post concluded.
Fredonia's Office of Emergency Management made a similar social media post about the continuing water conservation order on Monday morning.
Looming in the background is an equipment problem that clearly irked village officials when they learned about it last week.
Fred told them at a Board of Trustees workshop that a pump which transfers chlorine from a storage tank "had a problem... We ended up having to buy a new pump. It should be here this week. It was supposed to be here today but didn't come. Chemicals are still in abundance due to storage."
Trustee Leeann Lazarony asked him how old the pump is, and if it was part of the village's recent renovation of its chlorination system. Fred said the pump was part of the project and is less than 90 days old.
Trustee Paul Wandel said the pump is "gone, it's destroyed ... I feel we should investigate this a little further."
Mayor Michael Ferguson said, "We have obviously the receipt that we bought it, we have proof that we bought it and we have proof when we bought it. It's not like we put an old one on there. Isn't there any kind of timetable where we can go back after this company (that made the pump)?"
Lazarony wondered what the contract for the pump said specifically about a warranty.
Fred mentioned that a previous new pump didn't initially work, either.
"It just seems to me that ever since we've done this (chlorination improvement project), it's been kind of a problem -- not with you or with the treatment plant, but with mechanical stuff," Lazarony said to Fred.
Wandel went on about "root causes" and mentioned that a faulty airlock could be at the root of the pump problems.
"I am working with LaBella to get this thing nailed down. We gotta identify the root cause and work together to develop a solution," he said. We shouldn't be replacing a $2,000 pump every 90 days, that's not the way it should be."
LaBella remains Fredonia's "engineer of record" despite a recent decision by trustees to halt the firm's work, due to a lack of funding, on a project to connect with the North County Water District.