City to begin maintenance on Locksley Way water tower

Some Starkville Utilities customers may notice slight discoloration in their water as scheduled maintenance work begins on the Locksley Way water tower this week.

Utilities Superintendent Terry Kemp said consumers might notice some slightly cloudy water as work begins and valves

Volume No. 116, Issue No. 70 are opened, but said the discoloration posed no harm to consumers or their laundry and other possessions. Work will begin with the tower going offline and being drained either on Tuesday or Wednesday. Work will be carried out by Utility Service Company.

“Anytime you change the flow, or change operations, you have a potential of some of the particles in various lines around the city to kind of drop,” Kemp said. “That's what the discoloration would be. There's nothing harmful associated with it.”

Kemp said most of the potential discoloration would be tied to opening of valves and pumps.

“Were being sensitive to try to minimize that impact,” Kemp said.

He encouraged consumers to let the water run for a little while if they received cloudy water.

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He said the maintenance was routine, and undertaken on all water towers approximately once every 10 years.

“It's just kind of making sure we've got good protection and protective coating all the way on the tanks, and we do this about every 10-plus years,” Kemp said. “In this case, we had intended to do this about 2017. Because of

schedules and a lot of other issues, it's just now come back up to where we feel comfortable to take it out of service.”

He said the tower would be out of service for approximately a month, while maintenance was underway, but other towers and wells in the city's system would serve customers in the area.

“It's tied together, so we don't anticipate any issues with pressure or being able to provide, so it's not a problem,” Kemp said.

The Starkville Utilities department performed an inspection on the tower in December to determine what work would need to be completed on the tower.

“Most of the work will actually be done inside,” Kemp said. “We'll actually do a blast to clean up the entire surface of the inside, and repaint the inside. On the outside, we'll come down and basically do the same, clean and then we'll repaint and then be ready to go back.”

The Locksley Way tower is one of five elevated tanks in the city's system along with seven wells. It is capable of holding 500,000 gallons of water.

“They all operate together, and this will be taken out of service, and the other wells and storage would be used to offset that or compensate for it,” Kemp said.