By Brittany Woodby

BWOODBY@CULLMANTIMES.COM

Several area water systems are reaching out of Cullman County to get additional water.

Steve Newton, engineer with the city-hired firm CH2M Hill, met with representatives from the city’s wholesale water customers Wednesday to discuss additional conservation efforts and temporary plans for the drought emergency.

Newton encouraged the individual systems to participate in an integrated water management plan, which combines conservation with interconnection to secure supplemental drinking water from other systems.

Cullman County Water Superintendent David Bussman said the county system made arrangements to purchase up to 500,000 gallons of water a day from neighboring systems including Arley, Blount County and Northeastern Morgan County. He said while the three systems agreed to sell water to Cullman County, each required the county to sign a service contract to purchase water for a certain amount of time. Presently, the county is under contract to buy water from the City of Cullman. Though the city gave the county permission to buy water from other water systems, it required the county to return to full city service once the drought emergency is over.

“We’re unable to do both,” Bussman said. “We can’t pay two water bills for water we won’t even be able to use.”

Bussman said the infrastructure available to pipe water in from the Arley plant would only require minor updates but some work would have to be done to pipe water in from the other systems to service more of the county.

Hanceville Water Works and Sewer Board Co-Manager Sally Alexander said the city put its well back in service last weekend and is using well water to service a third of Hanceville’s customers.

Hanceville began using the aquifer, or underground reservoir of water, in 2004 when the city stopped purchasing water from the City of Cullman. Due to drought circumstances, the amount of water in the aquifer dropped and the Hanceville City Council voted to return to Cullman City water service, signing a four-year contract.

“Right now the water level in the aquifer is 85 feet,” Alexander said. “We’ve been pulling out roughly 220 gallons a minute when it’s running, but it’s not having to run all the time.”

Alexander said the water plant is set to pull water from the aquifer when the plant’s holding tank reaches eight feet. Then, it draws water from the well to fill the tank back up to 19 feet.

“If the aquifer continues to hold its level without dropping, we’ll continue to add more customers,” she said.

Hanceville had been expected to consume 500,000 gallons of water a day from Lake Catoma.

Representatives from other Cullman-area systems, such as East Cullman and VAW (Vinemont-Antioch-West Point), said the systems have made plans to draw more water from areas they already use water from. Arab’s water system is installing a pump station to be completed in two months to get more water to East Cullman through Joppa.

The VAW system was taking 60 percent of its water from the City of Cullman and 40 percent of its water from West Morgan and East Lawrence water system. Now, the VAW system will pull 40 percent from Cullman and draw the majority of water from the other systems.

Cullman City Council Chairman Woody Jacobs said the city is also considering supplemental drinking water supplies, particularly through Ingram Water Treatment Plant. The plant is located southeast of Lake Catoma and provides water for Ingram Farms. Cullman Mayor Donald Green said the city looked at buying water from Ingram Water Treatment Plant six months ago and was told the plant could provide as much as three million gallons a day for city water customers. Newton said the main advantage of purchasing water from Ingram Water Treatment Plant is because the plant is already held to water quality standards set by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management. Any other surface water sources would have to be assessed by ADEM and meet the department’s regulations before it would be available for consumption.

Green said there is already some infrastructure in place to bring finished water from the Ingram plant to the city.

“We’ve got a line close,” he said. “It’s not far from our treatment plant and not that difficult to buy. If we buy finished water, we could go ahead and put that water into our system.”

Newton also mentioned another option for the city would be to pull water out of Lake George, which was the city’s primary water reservoir until Lake Catoma was built in the 1960s. The Cullman City Council voted to award a bid for construction to begin on fixing the lake’s leaking dam and the project should be completed within two months. However, Newton said only a small amount of water is available from Lake George, which has been depleted due to the leaks and the drought, and pumping water from the lake might not be the most economical solution.

“There is no current water quality data available for Lake George,” he said. “This is a big issue because we have to satisfy ADEM’s water quality issues.”

Newton said the question ultimately is to determine whether or not it is worth the cost to set up a temporary pumping station at Lake George for only a small amount of water.

Other supplemental water ideas included drilling wells and piping water from an artesian well in Holly Pond 14 miles from the water treatment plant and setting up a hybrid approach by building a temporary water treatment facility at Smith Lake and putting the water in Lake Catoma to be processed later.

Newton said those options are the least desirable due to the time it would take to complete the projects and the cost involved.