Dive Team To Assess Byrdstown Water Plant Intake

Byrdstown has hired a dive team to investigate major issues with the town’s water plant intake system.

Water Plant Superintendent Buster Harmon said recent dry weather has caused changes in Dale Hollow Lake, including an increase in sediment in the water. Harmon said the town needs to find a solution as the silty water is causing various problems throughout the plant.

“It’s starving us,” Harmon said. “We’re getting the water to the plant but then what’s coming in is, as you’ve seen, that fine gritty stuff and it goes through our screens and stuff and it stops our filters up. And it’s stopping them up bad.”

Harmon said the town is preparing an AeroScrub system so the dive team can hook it up when they go underwater to inspect the intake system. Harmon said that system would pump air to the bottom of the lake and blow sediment off the intake screens.

“They’ve got a four-man crew on a boat,” Harmon said. “They’ve got their own boat and everything on compressors and their own tools and all this kind of stuff. And then when they put in they video tape everything that’s going on.”

Aldermen approved a quote for some $7,000 to bring the company to investigate the issue. Harmon said the dive team will only take one day to assess the system and should be able to come within the next week.

“From the top of the deck there as you see, it’s forty foot to the bottom,” Harmon said. “We’re in the channel.”

Harmon said hiring this team was recommended as the next step to improve the water plant by Engineer Nathaniel Green.

“They’re a real good company,” Harmon said. “They told me they do work for TVA and Corps of Engineers and all that stuff.”