Cookeville Water Still Exploring Next Steps After Tank Ruptured In April

Cookeville Water Department looking at the next steps for repairing the damaged chemical storage tank at the water treatment plant.

The tank ruptured in April. Director Barry Turner said the 6,000-gallon tank held ferric chloride used at the water plant.

“Age and deterioration on the tank, we turned it into the insurance company and they denied the claim,” Turner said. “We’re looking at what our options are to replace that because we’ll probably have to take the roof off or knock a hole in the wall on the side of the building to replace that.”

Turner said the contractor that is doing the expansion on the treatment plant has to do some work on the building that housed the tank already. He said they are getting the consultant engineer to explore what could be done and what the best way is to remove the tank.

Turner said it is still too early to set a timeline for the scope of the work. He said they just received word about the insurance denial at the end of last month, so they are still in the preliminary phase of looking at options.

“There’s not a huge rush, it’s not needed until after the plant expansion is done and the pumpage of water increases,” Turner said. “So we’re good for a while on that.”