Low water pressure may lead to boil order
Water levels the city described as critical Thursday night remained perilously low Friday, threatening a loss of pressure in the distribution system that could require a boil order for all of the more than
35,000 accounts in the city’s 145-squaremile service area.
“If we don’t get some relief soon, sooner or later we’re going to start losing pressure and go on a boil order,” Hot Springs Utilities Director Monty Ledbetter said Friday morning.
Without adequate pressure, groundwater can infiltrate cracked service lines and mains.
“If the pipe is broke somewhere, and the pressure goes to zero, that could suck groundwater in,” Ledbetter said. “That’s not a good situation.”
A news release the city issued Friday afternoon asked customers to conserve water and stop letting their faucets run.
“As temperatures are warming (Friday) and into next week, it is no longer necessary to keep faucets running,” the release said. “Keeping faucets turned off will aid in the conservation efforts.”
The city said a boil order would be a last resort but may be needed if conservation doesn’t curtail demand.
The city’s two treatment plants haven’t been able to offset water lost to broken
service lines during six straight days of high temperatures at or below freezing. Ledbetter said average hourly usage for about 250 commercial and residential accounts was more than 120 gallons per hour, usage rates suggesting a line break on the property owner’s side of the meter.
More than 2,200 gallons an hour was running through one meter Friday, he
said. About another 200 accounts were averaging 50 to 100 gallons an hour. Utility billing services has been contacting account holders with high readings, and utility crews and the fire department have been working to disconnect their meters. Ledbetter said about 3,000 accounts have leaks on their side of the meter.
The city’s 24-hour emergency on-call number for water and sewer problems is 321-6200.
“Until we get them shut off and stop the bleeding, that’s where we’re at,” Ledbetter, referring to the possibility of a boil order, said. “We have multiple crews out shutting off water. We probably got 100 calls (Thursday night) from customers who needed their water shut off.”
He said the distribution system’s 11 active storage tanks held 4.6 million gallons Friday morning, about a quarter of their combined capacity of more than
16 million gallons. The twins tank north of the Albert Pike and Airport roads intersection held 825,000 gallons, about 14% of its 6 million-gallon capacity. It feeds downtown and elevated tanks on Hollywood Avenue and at the Garland County Industrial Park.
The Hollywood tank held 491,000 gallons, less than half of its 1.1 million-gallon capacity.
Ledbetter said there’s not enough water to fill the 3 million-gallon Cornerstone tank, which came online in August as the first elevated tank the city added to its distribution system in 50 years. It was offline Friday.
Ledbetter said the distribution system usually holds about 15 million gallons at any given time. Water in elevated tanks, and in the top half of ground-level tanks, contributes to the hydraulic force that helps maintain pressure levels of 30 pounds per square inch or greater across the service area’s seven elevation zones.
Ledbetter said the Lakeside Plant that treats water from the city reservoir at Lake Ricks was running at 4.1 million gallons a day Friday, exceeding its 4-million-gallon rating. The Ouachita Plant that treats water from upper Lake Hamilton was running at 18 million gallons, about 85% of its 21-million-gallon rating.
Cold temperatures hindering the chemical process that binds suspended solids in water are keeping the Cozy Acres Road plant from running at full strength. As the particles get heavier, they fall to the bottom of sedimentation basins, but it takes longer for particles to settle in cold weather.
Ledbetter said the two plants would probably be taken offline Friday for filter backwashing. Cleaning their 15 filters with treated water will take about an hour, he said.
“We’ll have to stop at both plants and backwash filters,” he said. “We’ve been pushing them and pushing them. Eventually, you have to backwash them. There’s no choice there. When we do that we’ll lose a little ground. I’d rather do it in daytime, because usage is low in the daytime.”