City of St. Cloud leaders feel confident it is nearing the end of its years-long battle with discolored water.
A six-week Ice pigging operation will end Saturday, despite losing a few days to a COVID-19 outbreak. City officials said Friday the number of customer complaints has gone down during that time to just four.
The latest efforts — a sort of “inside-out” approach — speak to a full commitment to “doing whatever it takes” to clear up the problem “once and for all,” City Manager Bill Sturgeon said.
Divers recently into storage tanks to check them from the inside and found some leftover resin.
How did it get there? The city has determined that. during peak usage times, water was going through a bypass pipe directly to the ground storage tanks, so it didn’t go through the polishers that remove the last remaining resin particles.
New alarms for when the bypass kicks in and turbidity meters are being implemented so the city will find out immediately and be able to address why.
The ground storage tanks are being cleaned this week. Divers again will go in and “vacuum” the tank surfaces, much like a pool’s surfaces are cleaned. Then the city’s entire water system will be flushed, starting with transmission pipes directly from the plant into the water system, followed by an unidirectional flush of the entire system.
A change from last year is to flush from the plant out through the system, following its natural flow, rather than just in areas that log water complaints. The city will publish a list of pipes being flushed and the timeline. Two rounds of flushing will likely start in early October.
“It is not acceptable for this situation to continue,” Sturgeon said. “We are committed to every resource available to us. We feel resident’s frustration. The water is safe to drink and use, but we admit it’s had a discoloration issue and we’ve attacked it every way we can. We want to give good, clean water.”
