Gainesville City receives $5.6 million in grants to improve water, sewer systems
The City of Gainesville has been awarded a combined $5.6 million in funding through the Department of Natural Resources ARPA program, and major upgrades to the city’s water and sewer systems are being planned.
City employees say they are always on the lookout for grants or other funding opportunities that could bring money to the municipality to make upgrades and fund projects, so when the application circulated for funding through the DNR ARPA program last summer, the staff applied.
The city was notified this summer that it will receive $4,252,500 for drinking water improvements and $1,436,440 for wastewater improvements.
On the water side of things, one of the biggest recent goals of the city was to connect the water supply on the west side of town with the city’s center district to provide back up water supply in case it is needed.
“In October of 2021 the west well was hit by lightning, damaging the pumps. That side of town was without water over a weekend and into the next week while we were awaiting repair. This was a hardship since our nursing home, jail and an apartment complex are located on that side of town,” explained City Water Specialist Jessi Price. “We distributed water by the case to all residents but could only help with drinking water. Laundry and showers still weren’t possible. We opened up City Hall for any residents who wanted to bring containers to fill to help flush toilets and wash dishes.”
Since that time, a fix has been at the top of the priority list for city officials; however, as officials brainstormed and researched possibilities, it became clear that any type of solution would be quite costly. City employees say the best solution involves connecting the west water district with the center well to avoid the problem in the future. If the west side of town’s water supply was connected to the center well, in the event of another lightning strike or other issue causing the well pump to go down, water could be pulled from the center well to supply residences and businesses on the west side of town, avoiding a disruption in water service.
Price said to connect the two water districts, the city will need to install a new line and booster pumps to allow the center of town to feed the west side.
Once that project is complete, officials are planning on a couple other possible upgrades including raising and replacing the center water tower to help improve storage and pressure (and possibly eliminating some outdated booster pumps in that area), replacing lines and valves where its needed, improving a pressure reducer on the west side that is currently prone to leaks, configuring booster pumps located on the city’s center side to feed the east side during a outage, moving some remaining meters inside buildings that are currently outside (including moving the main line from where it currently exists), replacing damaged or broken fire hydrants throughout the city and purchasing one or more generators to help run the city’s water wells where there is a power outage.
For the wastewater side of things, the city is currently discussing the possibility of purchasing a backup generator that would run the city’s whole wastewater treatment plant during a power outage and possibly building a new lab building at the treatment plant area.
“Since completion of the new treatment plant we are doing a lot of our own testing and are needing the space and storage area to conduct them,” Price explained. “The city also has many grinder pump stations throughout for sewage. A lot of these are old and needing frequent repairs. We have hopes that any money left over will be used to replace some of these pump stations with new, more efficient ones.”
Price said that officials are currently in discussion with an engineering firm, and it is not clear when work funded by the grants will begin. The city’s existing lines are being surveyed and marked with various colored flags, which city residents may have noticed over the last several months. City officials say not to worry. The flags only mark current city utilities and are not an indicator of where there will be future digging.