On tap: Cape switching away from river for water needs

The Mississippi River is renowned for being toxic -- a massive Petri dish of bacteria, chemicals, sewage and other materials that are constantly being dumped upstream.

And, even though it is heavily treated beforehand, at least some of the water that flows from the faucets of Cape Girardeau's 18,000 water customers originates from that muddy mess.

"People go down to the river and say, 'Ew, we drink that?'" said Kevin Priester, water systems manager for Alliance Water Resource, which is contracted to oversee the city's water system.

"It's not like they're getting a drink directly from the river," he said. "But it's a mental, psychological thing."

Eradicating such negative perceptions is one of the reasons city officials are pleased that Cape Girardeau's reliance on the river for drinking water is about to come to an end.

The next three months will see the completion of a roughly $5 million project to switch to almost exclusively well water. Four new alluvial wells built along old U.S. 61 near the Diversion Channel are expected to come online in that period.

Officials say that will end a sometimes arduous 15-year effort, resulting in better-tasting, softer water for residents and fewer costs and less maintenance for the city.

"This is a major step in the right direction for the future of the city of Cape," said Public Works director Tim Gramling. "By the time we're through, people are really going to notice."

The city may be glad they're near the end, but it's been a series of stops and starts over 15 years. The river was the sole provider of treatable drinking water until 1977, when AmerenUE, which operated the system before the city bought it in 1992, drilled its first wells.

A decade later, Ameren, now known as Ameren Missouri, doubled its capacity with more wells near its secondary water treatment plant near the corner of South Sprigg Street and old U.S. 61.

But Ameren only used well water sparingly, mainly during the summer's peak use times, Priester said, giving residents a barely noticeable mix of river water and water from those wells.

After the city bought the water system from Ameren, talk of switching exclusively from river water began in earnest. In November 1996, city voters passed a $26.5 million bond issue and sales tax, which was partially used for a $17.6 million expansion to the city's primary facility, the Cape Rock Water Treatment Plant.

That expansion was needed, city officials said at the time, to meet increased warm-weather demands and would boost the plant's capacity from 4.5 million gallons to 7.6 million gallons per day, where it stands today, Priester said.

That project included 10 wells, which the city hyped at the time as a move toward well water over river water.

In 2004, the city held a dedication ceremony at the water treatment plant, which was substantially completed in 2003, but that was more than a year and a half after the Feb. 18, 2002, deadline. The delay was caused by numerous engineering and construction problems.

But even after those 10 wells came online, they never produced the amounts needed to solely provide the entire city water supply, in which usage normally fluctuates between 5 million to 6 million gallons a day to upward of 9 million gallons during summer days. Even with those wells, the mix of river water and well water was seldom better than 50-50.

"The wells never really produced the water that we wanted," Gramling said. "It just wasn't there."

More difficulties arose as the city scouted for new locations to build the four new wells that will replace the 10 existing ones. One spot they looked at near Buzzi Unicem in the south part of the city was ruled out because the cement plant had found sinkholes near its property and felt building wells would exacerbate the problem. The city then looked at building new wells farther south from Buzzi. But then the city developed a sinkhole problem of its own.

That's when they looked at the spot where the city had some wells for the city's secondary water plant. They found a massive underground water supply along old U.S. 61 that approaches the Diversion Channel not too far from two Ameren Missouri substations.

Testing showed that a safe water yield was about 250 million gallons a day. The new wells got drilled in the last three years. The new wells each pump 1,800 gallons per minute and have been tested at high pumping rates of 2,700 gallons a minute.

Over the last 12 months, Gramling said, nearly seven miles of piping was installed to get the water from the wells to the city's main water plant on East Cape Rock Drive. They are currently operating one of the four at any given time as a test run, which means about 70 percent of the drinking water is well water today.

"That's pretty good with just one well," Gramling said. "At the most we were at before with 10 wells was 50 percent and we're at 70 percent with just one well."

Gramling said 99 percent of the work is completed, but minor work remains -- such as installing control panels that will allow the wells to be operated from the water plant.

The wells, controls and a generator cost about $2.6 million. The pipeline was about another $2 million. Miscellaneous costs push the project total to roughly $5 million, Gramling said. The money is coming from a combination of federal stimulus dollars, State Revolving Fund loans and the sales tax and bond revenue.

The ground water from the wells obviously still comes from the river, Gramling said, but the abundance of sand and gravel serves as a filter for the water table.

The well water won't have to be as heavily treated and the city looks to save hundreds of thousands of dollars in chemical costs, Priester said. The city will still use chlorine, but much less of it, he said, and will still lime-soften the water.

But it will no longer require the use of more than a dozen treatment chemicals including carbon, potassium permanganate, polyaluminum chloride, cationic polymer and anionic polymer. That will save the utility nearly $150,000 a year on just one of them, when it no longer needs more than 700,000 pounds of polyaluminum chloride to remove silt from river water. And the savings from 46,000 pounds of coagulant used each year will save about $28,000 annually.

Priester said softer water shouldn't leave as much calcium on household items from water heaters to coffee pots. Maintenance costs should also decrease, he said, because calcium deposits also cause line breaks at times.

Now the city is even looking further forward, Gramling said. With a water supply greater than the city has capacity to treat, they are now looking at possibly expanding the plant on East Cape Rock Drive again. They also want to address low-pressure areas with more elevated tanks and improve connectivity by filling in the gaps where some pipes simply end.

"We're not looking to stop here," Gramling said of the wells. "When talking about the future of Cape's water supply, we're set with these new wells well into the future -- for probably a generation after us."

smoyers@semissourian.com

388-3642

Pertinent address:

20 E. Cape Rock Drive, Cape Girardeau, MO