News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
A long-term need for Cookeville’s Water and Sewer Department could be fulfilled by next summer.
City Council approved a $1.1 million bid for a standby generator at the city water plant. Director of Water Quality Control Barry Turner said the project could be finished almost a year early.
“Really it just depends on when we can get the delivery cause we anticipated to start with that it would take us two years to do this just because the delivery time on the generator, but now it looks like we may get this project done in a years time,” Turner said.
The bid stated that the estimated time of arrival for the generator is 588 days after the purchase was made. Turner said because the manufacturer already has generators preordered, it could arrive as early as next summer. Turner said construction plans are currently in progress and the department will try to bid it out before the end of 2024.
Turner said the city has talked about getting a generator for years. The department has tested putting in connection points and pulling in power with rented generators but this is inefficient in certain situations.
“The trouble is, if we have some big outage somewhere that affects several locations, there may not be a generator you can rent,” turner said. “Plus in the time to get a generator here, and the road to the intake is so steep that if it were to be during an ice storm, you could not get a generator to the plant.”
Turner said in most instances, as long as the city knows it will be able to get the power back on within a couple of days, the generator would allow customers to run water without restrictions.
“Our average usage is about 10 million gallons of water a day, the generators will allow us to do about 7.5 million gallons a day, and we have some water stored in the tanks as well,” Turner said.
Turner said the project also puts power lines underground which will help prevent power outages due to things like trees or tornados knocking down power lines.
