The Village of South Jacksonville is hopeful upcoming improvements will mean a better quality of water will be flowing through their system soon.
The Village Board of Trustees approved the waiving of bids and entering into a contract with All Service Contracting Corporation to install new filtering media in the water treatment tanks at the Village’s treatment plant in Oxivlle in a special meeting held during the regular committee of the whole on Thursday.
Village President Dick Samples said during the discussion that it is the same company that recently supplied new specialty sand for the drainage lagoon, and finding contractors to do this type of work was not easy.
Samples says the new media in the treatment plant should greatly improve the quality of the water. “Usually you back flush this once a week and we are at the point of back flushing it every two to three days trying to improve it. It hasn’t been replaced that we know of in twenty years.
This media is very similar to the sand in a swimming pool filter and they recommend changing it every three or four years. And it doesn’t run twenty-four seven, three sixty-five like this water plant does. So we’ve been very fortunate not to have replaced it but it should have been replaced a long time ago, and it’s at the point it’s got to be.”
The total cost of the contract is approximately $103,000 for all of the work involved. Samples said All Service Contracting will also conduct a review of the water softening plant on Vandailia located under the water tower to determine what shape it is in and what it would take to get it back online.
Samples says the Village currently remains on water from the City of Jacksonville due to a broken pump at the Oxville treatment plant. He says he is hopeful that will be remedied sooner rather than later.
“Again through lack of maintenance over the years the pump broke, and it’s a twenty-year-old pump, it’s obsolete. We ordered two new pumps at the last meeting. I can’t tell you where they are at right now in the system but they’ve been ordered and are on the way.”
Samples says the hope is that both the pumps and the media replacement project can be undertaken soon so that the plant will not have to be taken offline at a separate time.